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We could not afford even a wash-hand basin and jug; Gertie, the boys, and myself had to perform our morning ablutions in a leaky tin dish on a stool outside the kitchen door, which on cold frosty mornings was a pretty peppery performance: but this room contained everything dear to the heart of girlhood.
Man, but I'd sooner have a sniff o' the backwoods " "Than a mouthful of bacon? Not I," chimed in Alf merrily, at which the man laughed heartily as he turned on his heel. "I'm thinking that there's very little poetry in a hungry stomach," he said. "Well, 'get a gait on. You'll find a wash-hand basin behind the tent, and breakfast'll be ready when you are."
There were the pink curtains hanging like a tent above her, there were the scraas of the thatched roof, with the cracking whitewash snipping down on the counterpane, there were the press and the wash-hand table, the sheep-skin on the floor, and the sun coming through the orchard window. But everything was transfigured, everything beautiful, everything mysterious.
And yet Bear Belcovitch had lived in much better style in Poland, possessing a brass wash-hand basin, a copper saucepan, silver spoons, a silver consecration beaker, and a cupboard with glass doors, and he frequently adverted to their fond memories. But he brought nothing away except his bedding, and that was pawned in Germany on the route.
The furniture consisted of a small table, now covered with a perpetual litter of papers; a ramshackle wash-hand stand, on which a broken vegetable dish served as a receptacle for soap and such objects; a bed, which bred remarkable crops of fleas, and to which clung an old patchwork quilt, but which was otherwise poor in adornment; a chair, and an old travelling-box.
He engaged Alfred Emery Cathie as clerk, but made no other change, except that he bought a pair of new hair brushes and a larger wash-hand basin. Any change in his mode of life was an event. When in London he got up at 6.30 in the summer and 7.30 in the winter, went into his sitting-room, lighted the fire, put the kettle on and returned to bed.
I resolved to imitate the French author, and find occupation and amusement enough to relieve the tedium of my wakefulness, by making a mental inventory of every article of furniture I could see, and by following up to their sources the multitude of associations which even a chair, a table, or a wash-hand stand may be made to call forth.
"One morning Sir Harry and I were standing in front of our residence, in our part of the island, talking over matters. Sir Harry was taking a bawth in a wash-hand basin " "What's that?" asked Uncle Jim. "I reckon he means a wash-pan," explained Billy Hudgens. "At least, Sir Harry was making a deuce of a row with the soap, and he'd the wash-hand basin quite full of bubbles.
The principal, almost the only, articles of furniture were a large bed, a wash-hand stand; a kitchen table, and two or three chairs, of which the cane seats were bulged and torn. A few meaningless pictures hung here and there, and on the mantel-piece, which sloped forward somewhat, stood some paltry ornaments, secured in their places by a piece of string stretched in front of them.
There were three brass bedsteads in a row, only four feet broad, with spring-beds, hair mattresses a foot thick, and snowy sheets for coverlets, instead of counter-panes; so that, if you were hot, feverish, or sleepless in one bed, you might try another, or two. Thick carpets and rugs, satin-wood wardrobes, prodigious wash-hand stands, with china backs four feet high.
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