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Penelope's Postscripts by Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
page 79 of 119 (66%)

The New Inn proved some years ago to be too small for its would-be
visitors. An addition couldn't be built because there wasn't any
room; but the landlady succeeded in getting a house across the way.
Here there are bedrooms, a sort of quiet tap-room of very great
respectability, and the kitchens. As the dining-room is in house
number one, the matter of serving dinner might seem to be attended
with difficulty, but it is not apparent. The maids run across the
narrow street with platters and dishes surmounted by great
Britannia covers, and in rainy weather they give the soup or joint
the additional protection of a large cotton umbrella. The walls of
every room in the inn are covered with old china, much of it
pretty, and some of it valuable, though the finest pieces are not
hung, but are placed in glass cabinets. One cannot see an inch of
wall space anywhere in bedrooms, dining- or sitting-rooms for the
huge delft platters, whole sets of the old green dragon pattern,
quaint perforated baskets, pitchers and mugs of British lustre,
with queer dogs, and cats, and peacocks, and clocks of china. The
massing of colour is picturesque and brilliant, and the whole
effect decidedly unique. The landlady's father and grandfather had
been Bideford sea-captains and had brought here these and other
treasures from foreign parts. As Clovelly is a village of seafolk
and fisher-folk, the houses are full of curiosities, mostly from
the Mediterranean. Egeria had no china in her room, but she had
huge branches of coral, shells of all sizes and hues, and an
immense coloured print of the bay of Naples. Tommy's landlady was
volcanic in her tastes, and his walls were lined with pictures of
Vesuvius in all stages of eruption. My room, a wee, triangular box
of a thing, was on the first floor of the inn. It opened
hospitably on a bit of garden and street by a large glass door that
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