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Updated: May 14, 2025
The wallpaper, its ugly pattern mercifully faded, was fantastically streaked from the dampness, in one corner the ceiling plaster had fallen and newspapers had been tacked over the laths to keep out the cold. A sickening revulsion, a longing to escape into the sweet crisp air swept Robin. She shrank away into a corner for fear the dreadful old Granny might touch her. But she must say something!
The leaf-stalk, when dried, is light and elastic, like the quill of a bird owing to the thin, hard, outer covering and soft internal pith. Out of the outer rind, when split off, the Indian makes baskets and window-blinds. The pithy part is separated into laths, about half an inch thick, with which window-shutters, boxes, bird-cages, partitions, and even entire walls, are constructed.
The panels shrunk, the windows cracked; fragments of plaster fell out of the ceiling, and the naked laths were shown instead; but how all this was brought about, Scrooge knew no more than you do. He only knew that it was quite correct; that everything had happened so; that there he was, alone again, when all the other boys had gone home for the jolly holidays.
The Skin is left to the setting on of the Shoulders, which is lin'd all round with small Hoops, and flat Sort of Laths, to hold it open for the Arm to go in. They have a Way to preserve the Eyes, as if living.
Many a merry evening had I spent in the low, oak-paneled "general room" of Tomerl's cottage when he was still a gay young bachelor, and no change had since been made in the aspect of the apartment. In one corner stood the huge pile of pottery used for heating the room, and round it were still fixed the rows of wooden laths by means of which I had so frequently dried my soaking apparel.
These rooms led direct into one another, and, consisting of little more than timber and plaster, were in a woeful state of dilapidation. Everywhere the laths grinned through torn gaps in the ceilings and walls; everywhere the latter were blotched and mildewed with damp, and the floor-boards rotting in their tracks.
At one end of the hut we constructed a wide fireplace and chimney in the same manner, and hung up an old blanket over the space left for a doorway. The inside of the slab walls and chimney we wattled with mud and laths, which we split up, and plastered over with mud and chopped grass.
Upstairs were two small chambers, but they were more like chicken-coops than bedrooms; for the walls, made of laths not yet plastered, were full of cracks and peep-holes, and the staircase which led to them resembled a ladder more than was desirable. There was plenty of sunshine everywhere, for there were no blinds, and the sweet yellow light made a cheerfulness in the place, forlorn as it was.
'Twas so ghastly, oh, so frightfully dark and warm: I could see the warm darkness; so funny, that steep, slanting tiled roof, crossed by black rafters, beams and laths, and all that space beyond, which disappeared in the dark ridgework: 'twas like a deserted, haunted booth at a fair, during the night.
Claude descended in front of her to keep her from slipping. She hung back while he led her through confusing doorways and helped her over the piles of laths that littered the floors. At the edge of the gaping cellar entrance she stopped and leaned wearily on his arm for a moment.
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