Sunday-school on the ground floor of thekeeper’s cottage that stood against the church-yard,in a piece nibbled out of holy ground.Some old folks said this cottage had been thechurch-house where in ancient days the peoplewho came to divine service stayed betweenmorning prayer and evensong, ate their mid-daymeal and gave out and received theirhebdomadal quotient of gossip. But suchdays were long over, the house had been usedas a keeper’s lodge for at least a hundredyears. The basement consisted of one lowhall exactly six feet one inch from floor torafters. There was no ceiling between it andthe upper house—only a flooring laid on the2rafters. In pre-traditional days the men hadsat and eaten and drunk in the room above,and the women in that below, between services,and their horses had been stabledwhere now the keeper had his kennel.
The basement chamber was paved withslabs of slate. Rats infested the lodge, theycame after the bones and biscuits left by thedogs. The pheasants’ food was kept there,the keeper’s wife dropped her dripping,and the children were not scrupulous aboutfinishing their crusts. The rats underminedthe slates, making runs beneath the pavementto get at the box of dog biscuits, and thesacks of buckwheat, and the parcels of peppercorns;consequently the slates were not firmto walk on. Moreover, in the floor was asunless secret cellar, of but eighteen inchesin depth, for the reception of liquor, or lacesor silks that had not paid the excise. Theslates over this place, long disused, were infirmand inclined to let whoever stepped onthem down.
During the week the keeper’s wife washedin the basement and slopped soapy water3about, that ran between the slates and formedpuddles, lurking under corners, and when, onSunday, the incautious foot rested on anangle of slate, the slab tilted and squirted forththe stale unsavoury water.
The room, as already said, was unceiled.The rafters were of solid oak; the boardsabove were of deal, and had shrunk in places,and in places dropped out the core of theirknots. The keeper’s children found a pleasurein poking sticks and fingers through, andin lying flat on the floor with an eye on theknot-hole, surveying through it the proceedingsin the Sunday-school below.
About the floor in unsystematic arrangementspraddled forms of deal, rubbed by boys’trousers to a polish. Some of these formswere high in the leg, others short. No twowere on a level, and no two were of thesame length. They were rudely set aboutthe floor in rhomboidal shapes, or rather intrapeziums, which according to Euclid haveno defined shapes at all.
There was a large open fireplace at oneend of the room, in which in winte