The furniture? There were not
five chairs or five separate pieces of any furniture in the room
altogether. The fringes that hung from the cornice of the bed?
Plenty of them, at any rate! Up I jumped on the counterpane, with
my pen-knife in my hand. Every way that "5 along" and "4 across"
could be reckoned on those unlucky fringes I reckoned on
them--probed with my penknife--scratched with my nails--crunched
with my fingers. No use; not a sign of a letter; and the time was
getting on--oh, Lord! how the time did get on in Mr. Davager's
room that morning.
I jumped down from the bed, so desperate at my ill luck that I
hardly cared whether anybody heard me or not. Quite a little
cloud of dust rose at my feet as they thumped on the carpet.
"Hullo!" thought I, "my friend the head chambermaid takes it easy
here. Nice state for a carpet to be in, in one of the best
bedrooms at the Gatliffe Arms." Carpet! I had been jumping up on
the bed, and staring up at the walls, but I had never so much as
given a glance down at the carpet. Think of me pretending to be a
lawyer, and not knowing how to look low enough!
The carpet! It had been a stout article in its time, had
evidently began in a drawing-room; then descended to a
coffee-room; then gone upstairs altogether to a bedroom. The
ground was brown, and the pattern was bunches of leaves and roses
speckled over the ground at regular distances.
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