We ascended to the hall, and then I observed to my wife that we had forgotten to examine the stabling and the wine cellar; we had even neglected the coal cellars.
"We won't bother about them to-day," she said, and despite my despondency I inwardly rejoiced.
I had also learned to prepare myself for the trials of this house-hunting. In my side pocket were two flasks, one containing water, the other brandy. I had often grown faint during our wanderings, and a sup of brandy now and then had kept up my strength. I saw that my wife was lower spirited than usual, and I mixed some spirits and water in the tin cup attached to one of the flasks. She accepted the refreshment eagerly, and I took a larger draught myself, and was much cheered by it.
"It always," said my wife, in a brighter tone, "makes one feel rather faint to look over a house which has been empty a long time, especially a house which is so far away from--from any others."
"It is almost as if we were in a grave," I observed.
"How _can_ you say such dreadful things!" she retorted. "If I were a man I should have more courage."
There were three rooms on the ground floor, each of considerable dimensions, and all in shocking dilapidation. The paper had peeled off the walls, and was hanging in tattered strips to the ground; quantities of plaster had dropped from the ceilings, and here and there the bare rafters were exposed; there were holes in the flooring; the grates were cracked, the hearths broken up.
"A hundred pounds," I observed, "would not go far toward making this house habitable."
"It wouldn't be half enough," said my wife.
Upon quitting the dining room I inquired whether she wished to go any further.
"I am going," she said stoutly, "all over the house."
Upstairs we went to the first floor, where we found the rooms in a similar condition to those below.
"Disgraceful!" exclaimed my wife. "No wonder the landlord was indignant with the last tenant."
In due course we found ourselves on the second floor, and we stood in a large room, the windows of which faced the garden in the rear. I had opened the door of this room with difficulty, and the moment we entered it slammed to, which I ascribed to the wind blowing through some broken panes. By this time I perceived plainly that my wife's spirits were down to zero, and I was comforted by the reflection that looking over a house so wretched, so forlorn, so woe-begone, would, after all we had gone through, be the last straw that would break the back of her determination to move. We had been in the house about half an hour, and nothing but her indomitable spirit had sustained her in the trying ordeal.