Riceyman Steps by Arnold Bennett — Read

The front door was opened to Mrs. Arb's quiet knock by the oldest child in the house, an obstreperous boy of five, who was suddenly struck sheepish and mute by the impressive lady on the doorstep. He said nothing at all in reply to Mrs. Arb's request to see Elsie, but sidled backwards along the lobby and opened a door, looking up at her with the most crude curiosity. As soon as she had gone into the room and the inhibition was lifted, he ran off to the yard raising his heels high and laughing boisterously.

The room in which Elsie had been installed was crowded and overcrowded with the possessions of the meat-salesman and his wife. The walls were covered from cornice to near the floor with coloured supplements from Christmas numbers, either in maple-wood frames or unframed; a wonderful exhibition of kindly sentiment: the innocence of children, the purity of lovers, the cohesion of families, the benevolence of old age, immense meals served in interiors of old oak, landscapes where snow lay in eternal whiteness on church steeples, angels, monks, blacksmiths, coach-drivers, souls awakening: indeed, a vast and successful effort to convince the inhabitants of Riceyman Square that Riceyman Square was not the only place on earth. The display undoubtedly unbent, diverted, and cheered the mind. In between the chromatic prints were grey, realistic photographs of people who really existed or had existed. The mantelpiece was laden with ornaments miscalled "china," standing on bits of embroidery. The floor was covered with oddments of carpet. There were many chairs, unassorted; there was a sofa; there was a cradle; there was a sewing-machine; there was a clotheshorse, on which a man's blue apron with horizontal white stripes was spread out. There were several tables, including a small walnut octagonal table, once a lady's worktable, which stood in the window and upon which a number of cloth-bound volumes of Once a Week were piled carefully, corkscrew-wise. And there was a wardrobe, also a number of kitchen utensils. The place was encumbered with goods, all grimy as the walls and ceilings, many of them cracked and worn like the woodwork and paint, but proving triumphantly that the meat-salesman had no commerce with pawnbrokers.