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I had read the "Assommoir," and had been much impressed by its pyramid size, strength, height, and decorative grandeur, and also by the immense harmonic development of the idea; and the fugal treatment of the different scenes had seemed to me astonishingly new the washhouse, for example: the fight motive is indicated, then follows the development of side issues, then comes the fight motive explained; it is broken off short, it flutters through a web of progressive detail, the fight motive is again taken up, and now it is worked out in all its fulness; it is worked up to crescendo, another side issue is introduced, and again the theme is given forth.

The former has 350, the latter 420 inhabitants. The former are by far the better fed, clad, and housed, with a hospital, a school, and a washhouse, all of which are wanting in the British camp. At Port Elizabeth there is a Boer camp. A Dutch deputation came with 50l. to expend in improving their condition, but returned without spending the money as nothing was needed.

"Why, for ever so long I shouted and shouted to you!" "I have been telling Nadezhda that last night you saw her walking in the garden." He sprang towards me with a vicious scowl. "Who gave you leave to do so?" he exclaimed. "Wait a moment. I said that it was only in a dream, that you saw her crossing the garden to the washhouse." "Indeed? And why did you do that?"

He would come out of the Great Washhouse feeling almost, but not quite as unclean as if his linen had been kept at home and never washed at all. And the trail of all that nastiness would spread over the six months of their engagement; it would poison everything. He didn't mean to think about it or let Winny think.

Pierre had never seen such an amount of eating, amidst such perspiration, in an atmosphere as stifling as that of a washhouse full of hot steam. The odour of the victuals seemed to thicken into a kind of smoke.

And two or three years afterwards a room or so more was built, and a bit of the field taken in for a garden; and then by degrees the whole part now inhabited by the family was built, leaving only the old cottage as a scullery and washhouse; and the whole field was turned into the garden, as you see. But whether it was Melville's money or the aunt's that did it, I don't know.

Presently from the dark, blurred doorway in the wall of the washhouse there emerged a dark figure which went flitting away among the trees, while after it someone called in a sharp, incisive whisper: "Do not forget. You MUST come." "Oh, I shall be only too glad!" "Very well. In the morning the lame woman shall call upon you. Do you hear?"

All that Pierre ever saw in the way of shipping was a sort of ancient, covered pinnace, a rotting Noah's ark, moored on the right beside the old bank, and he fancied that it might be used as a washhouse, though on no occasion did he see any one in it.

Pierre had never seen such an amount of eating, amidst such perspiration, in an atmosphere as stifling as that of a washhouse full of hot steam. The odour of the victuals seemed to thicken into a kind of smoke.

The next day he entered the washhouse of Chy Fook as an assistant, and on the following Friday was sent with a basket of clean clothes to Chy Fook's several clients. It was the usual foggy afternoon as he climbed the long windswept hill of California Street one of those bleak, gray intervals that made the summer a misnomer to any but the liveliest San Franciscan fancy.