<< First         < Previous  Next >         Last >>

(21)

be coming for the summer; had left everything to the last; ex-
pected to find things as they had left them. Slowly and pain-
fully, with broom and pail, mopping, scouring, Mrs. McNab, Mrs.
Bast stayed the corruption and the rot; rescued from the pool of
time that was fast closing over them now a basin, now a cupboard;
fetched up from oblivion all the Waverley novels and a tea set
one morning; in the afternoon restored to sun and air a brass
fender and a set of steel fire irons. George, Mrs. Bast's son,
hammered nailscaught rats, cut grass. They had the vbuilders. Attended with
the creaking of hinges and the screeching of bolts, the slamming
and banging of damp-swollen wood-work some rusty laborious birth
seemed to be takeingplace, as the women, stooping, rising, groaning,
singing, slapped and slammed, up stairs now, now down in the
cellars. Oh, they said, the work!
     They drank their tea in the bedroom sometimes, or in the study;
.Xbreaking off work at midday with the smudge on their faces, and
their old hands clasped and cramped with the broom handles.
Flopped on chairs they contemplated now the magnificent conquest
over taps and bath; now the more arduous, more partial triumph
over long rows of philosophy, black as ravens once, now white-stained,
breeding pale mushrooms and secreting furtive spiders.Once more,
as she felt the tea warm in her, the telescope fitted itself to
Mrs. McNab's eyes, and in a ring of light she saw the old gentle-
man, lean as a rake, wagging his head, as she came up with the
washing, talking to himself, she supposed, on the lawn. Never
noticed her. Some said he was dead; some said she was dead.

 


Zoom on/off

Page 1

<< First         < Previous  Next >         Last >>