Kilda Hall Author:Frances Martin General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1877 Original Publisher: Charing Cross Pub. Co. Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where ... more »you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER VII. Situated in the north of London was an old-fashioned house, four stories high, having two or three rooms on each floor, and a staircase so open that it not only allowed the wind to blow up and down, making every door slam and -window shake, but possessed also the not over-pleasant quality of carrying with more than electric . despatch every sound up and down. One might even call it a whispering-gallery. Master's rooms were on the second floor, and master approved of the doors of his rooms being open; he said he liked air, also good fires, for they purified the air, and as he seldom went out, owing to several ailments, particularly rheumatism, and, in fact, had not been either up or down stairs for the last twelve months, air in his house was most essential to health. He was rather a curious old gentleman, was this master, and lived very retired. His domestics -- two sisters who occupied the position of cook and housemaid, had pretty well their own way; and a very nice place it would have been for them, had it not been for the staircase. But Thomas, who acted as valet, clerk, and con- fidei. Ual man, had, as one says, a life of it. There was one other inmate of that dull, dark, windy dwelling; but he will soon be home, and may possibly be recognized. The old gentleman was sitting before his sitting-room fire -- a regular old gentleman, with so many lines and cracks in his i'ace, which was also so brown, that it very much resembled some of that extremely ancient-fashioned china, which is exhibited as particularly valuable. Such specimens usually,...« less