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This phenomenon ceased when we arrived at the opposite wall, nor did it repeat itself on returning. We remounted the stairs, and entered the rooms on the ground-floor, a dining parlor, a small back-parlor, and a still smaller third room that had been probably appropriated to a footman, all still as death. We then visited the drawing-rooms, which seemed fresh and new.
And you heard the door-bell is Bob Clinton " He grew white. "My eyes are bad, for some reason," he muttered, and switched off the lights again. "How very dark you have it in here!" said Grace reprovingly. "Of course Mr. Clinton has been shown in the back-parlor, where it is light. I will go to him there, and leave you two " she paused irresolutely, but neither spoke.
He often asked himself how he had ever been a moment at his ease those November evenings in the tavern's back-parlor at Vermilionville. It was because he had a task there; sociality was not the business of the hour. And now I have something else to confess about Claude; something mortifying in the extreme. For you see the poverty of all these explanations. Their very multitude makes them weak.
Violet's childhood was happy enough. She was left in unrestrained liberty outside of the little back-parlor, where her Aunt Martha held sway. Out of school-hours, her joy and delight were to join the school-boys in their wildest plays. She climbed fences, raced up and down alley-ways, stormed inoffensive door-yards, chased wandering cats with the best of them.
Through the blinds of a back-parlor window I watched his movements, as, encouraged by pater-familias, he drew off his coat, moistened his hands, and undertook to "snake up" the big weight. An ignominious failure to start the barrel was the result. The stout gentleman tugged till he was so red in the face that apoplexy seemed imminent, and then he dejectedly gave it up.
I may as well say that I met him when I went to that shop to get the small articles of grocery which I required for my own consumption. He has served me often across the counter. Then one day I was taken rather weak and ill in the shop, and he took me into his back-parlor, a very comfortable room, and gave me a glass of excellent old port; and since then, somehow, we have been friends.
Morgan, after performing his duties on the first floor, had a pleasure in making the old lady fetch him his boot-jack and his slippers. She was his slave. The little black profiles of her son and daughter; the very picture of Tiddlecot church, where she was married, and her poor dear Brixham lived and died, was now Morgan's property, as it hung there over the mantle-piece of his back-parlor.
"It doesn't matter whether you believe or not if you do not stir up controversy. Miller's 'suggestion' is adverse to the serenity of the psychic, that's all. The old-time sleepy back-parlor logic has no weight with me. Maxwell and Flammarion are my guides." For four hours we sat thus, and nothing happened. How I kept them at it I do not now understand, but they stayed.
Ashton came down, she found the breakfast-table in its wonted place in the broad kitchen, instead of being laid in the back-parlor, as was the custom when there were guests in the house. It was a very happy breakfast; the door opened wide upon the green behind the house, and the September morning air brought in an appetite for the generously laden table.
Nor has Tom forgotten to repay the old Antiquary, who gave him a shelter when he was homeless; this home is still under the roof of the old man, toward whose comfort he contributes weekly a portion of his earnings. If you could but look into that little back-parlor, you would see a picture of humble cheerfulness presented in the old man, his daughter, and Tom Swiggs, seated round the tea-table.
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