Mrs. Lirriper's Legacy
CHAPTER I--MRS. LIRRIPER RELATES HOW SHE WENT ON, AND WENT OVER
Ah! It's pleasant to drop into my own easy-chair my dear though a
little palpitating what with trotting up-stairs and what with
trotting down, and why kitchen stairs should all be corner stairs is
for the builders to justify though I do not think they fully
understand their trade and never did, else why the sameness and why
not more conveniences and fewer draughts and likewise making a
practice of laying the plaster on too thick I am well convinced
which holds the damp, and as to chimney-pots putting them on by
guess-work like hats at a party and no more knowing what their
effect will be upon the smoke bless you than I do if so much, except
that it will mostly be either to send it down your throat in a
straight form or give it a twist before it goes there. And what I
says speaking as I find of those new metal chimneys all manner of
shapes (there's a row of 'em at Miss Wozenham's lodging-house lower
down on the other side of the way) is that they only work your smoke
into artificial patterns for you before you swallow it and that I'd
quite as soon swallow mine plain, the flavour being the same, not to
mention the conceit of putting up signs on the top of your house to
show the forms in which you take your smoke into your inside.
Being here before your eyes my dear in my own easy-chair in my own
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