The table was stained, and the books which littered half of it were thick with dust and grease-spotted.
The earthen floor was damp and pitted here and there, so that the chairs stood perilously among its inequalities.

The fine white powder of turf ashes lay thick upon the dresser.

The whitewash above the fireplace was blackened by the track of the smoke that had blown out of the chimney and climbed up to the still blacker rafters of the roof.

Hyacinth remembered how he, and not his father, had been accustomed to clean the room and wash the cups and plates.

He wondered how such matters had been managed in his absence, and a great sense of compassion filled his eyes with tears as he thought of the painful struggle which the details of life must have brought upon his father.