With the exception of healthy geraniums in most of the windows, there was little ornament in these ground-floor rooms; but all was new, clean, and airy.

The upper rooms were more heavily furnished, but were most of them shut up in winter.

All the year round the landlord took in the daily papers; and for that reason his bar-room, large and always tolerably quiet, was the best public reading-room the village boasted.
The keeper of this establishment was a rather elderly man, and of late he had been so crippled by rheumatism that he could walk little and only on crutches.

He was not a dainty man; his coat was generally dusty, his grey beard had always a grimy appearance of tobacco about it.

He spent the greater part of his day now sitting in a high pivot chair, his crutches leaning against it.
"You see, miss," he said to Eliza, "I'll tell you what the crying need for you is in this house at present; it's to step round spry and see that the girls do their work.