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I am rooming with an Irish family whose floor space is limited, so we all have shake-downs, and in the morning can clear the decks for action with no bedsteads in the way. I am very 'crummy, badly flea-bitten, overrun with bed bugs, somewhat fly-blown, but, redemption of it all, I am free and always drunk.
There were two coarse china ornaments of the commonest kind; and there was a square of embossed card, dirty and fly-blown, with a collection of wretched riddles printed on it, in all sorts of zigzag directions, and in variously colored inks. He took the card and went away to read it at the table on which the candle was placed, sitting down with his back resolutely turned to the curtained bed.
These recognitions hurt him so much that he could hardly keep from crying out. He feared to lift his eyes lest he should see some old acquaintance in the shape of a fly-blown picture grinning at him. The proprietor of the hotel and his family were all absent at church, and for this small mercy Kellson was devoutly thankful. Supper over, he strolled out into the silent village street.
There were two coarse china ornaments of the commonest kind; and there was a square of embossed card, dirty and fly-blown, with a collection of wretched riddles printed on it, in all sorts of zig-zag directions, and in variously coloured inks.
A wave of exultation rushed through her as she thought of this her great adventure, of this her freedom for at least a short while, and of the unknown quantity she was mixing into her portion of daily bread which, up to this moment, had consisted of the plainest, wholesomest, most uninteresting bun-loaf, not even resembling that extremely dull and unappetising cake named, I believe, Swiss roll, which hides its staleness under the glass case of Life's shop window, lying fly-blown on the plate and heavily and unimaginatively on the digestive powers of those who consume it for the thin layer of jam to be discovered between its wedges of sullen dough.
A youth with a wooden face, already seated before a fly-blown chess-board, asked him drearily if he would have black or white. Shelton took white; he was oppressed by the virtuous odour of this room. The little man with the deep blue eyes came up, stood in an uneasy attitude, and watched: "Your play's improving, young Smith," he said; "I should think you'd be able to give Banks a knight."
Thus it was that upon the 15th of July, 1870, he found himself at his breakfast in the fly-blown coffee-room of the "George Hotel" in the market square of Dunsloe. It is a dull and depressing coffee-room, and one which is usually empty, but on this particular day it was as crowded and noisy as that of any London hotel.
Then there was a man further along who had no eyes, and whose face was the color of a fly-blown beefsteak, and wrinkled and twisted like a lava-flow and verily so tumbled and distorted were his features that no man could tell the wart that served him for a nose from his cheek-bones.
Even in this remote district the refreshment-rooms were far above the average in England. At Akstafá, for instance, a station surrounded by a howling wilderness of steppe and marsh; well-cooked viands, game, pastry, and other delicacies, gladdened the eye, instead of the fly-blown buns and petrified sandwiches only too familiar to the English railway traveller.
There were few people to be seen on the street, but through the open doors of the lofty fly-blown houses we saw floury legions at work making maccaroni; grinding maccaroni, rolling it, cutting it, hanging it in mighty skeins to dry, and gathering it when dried, and putting it away.