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Now, take the case of a labouring man with seven or eight children, and living in a cottage with two bedrooms, and whose wife is confined; and let it be remembered that large families are common amongst this class. The wife must certainly have one room to herself and her attendant. The father, then, and his children must crowd into the other, or sleep as they can on the ground-floor.
The kitchen, built behind and beneath the staircase, was lighted from the courtyard, which was neatly paved with cobble-stones and entered by a porte-cochere. Such was the ground-floor. The first floor contained three bedrooms, above them a small attic chamber. A wood-shed, a coach-house, and a stable adjoined the kitchen, and formed two sides of a square around the courtyard.
My mind was at first somewhat disturbed by the discovery of one or two enormous toads and long-armed spiders in my apartment; but they fortunately did not interfere with my repose, for I slept like a top. All the rooms being on the ground-floor, it is almost impossible entirely to exclude intruders of this description.
It was delightful to see how the dull veil, as of London fog, had been lifted from her face; her eyes sparkled. Then, "Oh, there's the ground-floor bell," she cried, moving instinctively toward the door. "Nonsense; I hear no bell," said Lancelot. "I told you I always hear it," said Mary Ann, hesitating and blushing delicately before the critical word. "Oh, well, run along then.
The streets then were filled with the debris flung from a hundred upper windows, while certain ground-floor tenants, such as butchers and candlemakers, contributed their full share to the fragrant heaps. As for these too seldom used narrow turnpike stairs, imagine the dames of fashion tilting their vast hoops and silken show-petticoats up and down in them!
It was his custom to visit her after nightfall, in her own house, when he could find no opportunity for an interview elsewhere; and to further this course she would contrive to leave unfastened a window on the ground-floor overlooking the lawn, by entering which a back stair-case was accessible; so that he could climb up to her apartments, and gain audience of his lady when the house was still.
M. Sabathier was one of the first to secure admittance, being placed in a ground-floor room which was known as the Family Ward. Sick men were there allowed to have their wives with them; but to the other wards of the hospital only women were admitted.
There was nobody about; the place seemed deserted, and the blinds were down on the ground-floor windows. Inspector Seldon knocked loudly at the front door with the big, old-fashioned brass knocker, and rang the bell.
By day they achieve a certain animation through the intermittent appearance of women in aprons, who shake rugs out of the front doors or, emerging from areas, go down to the public-house on the corner with jugs to fetch the supper-beer. In almost every ground-floor window there is a card announcing that furnished lodgings may be had within.
He was ushered by Benoit, the elderly body-servant, rather grandiloquently called the seneschal, into the ground-floor room known traditionally as the library. It still contained several shelves of neglected volumes, from which it derived its title, but implements of the chase fowling-pieces, powder-horns, hunting-bags, sheath-knives obtruded far more prominently than those of study.
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