Nor did the
interior impress them less favourably. The rooms were large, and low,
the ceilings, walls, floors, and staircase all of oak. The
diamond-lattice windows, and narrow, tortuous passages, and
innumerable nooks and crannies and cupboards, created an atmosphere of
combined quaintness and comfort that irresistibly appealed to the
Murphys. Viewed under the searching rays of the sun, and cheered by
the voices of the visitors, the interior of the house, for artistic
taste and cheerfulness, would indeed be hard to beat; but, as Mrs.
Murphy's eyes wandered up the stairs and down the corridors, she was
filled with misgivings as to how the place would strike her at night.
Though not nervous naturally, and by no means superstitious, at night,
when the house was dark and silent, and the moon called forth the
shadows, she was not without that feeling of uneasiness which most
people--even avowed sceptics, experience when passing the night in
strange and novel quarters.
The room they engaged--I cannot say selected, as, the hotel being
full, they had "Hobson's choice"--was at the end of a very long
passage, at the back of the house, and overlooking the yard. It was a
large apartment, and in one of its several recesses stood the bed, a
gigantic, ebony four-poster, with spotlessly clean valance, and, what
was of even greater importance, well-aired sheets. The other furniture
in the room, being of the same sort as that in the majority of
old-fashioned hostels, needs no description; but a fixture in the
shape of a cupboard, a deep, dark cupboard, let into the wall facing
the bed, instantly attracted Mrs.
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