James Matthew Barrie

A Window in Thrums James Matthew Barrie

I speak of the chairs, but if we go together into the "room" they will not bevisible to you. For a long time the house has been to let. Here, on the left of thedoorway, as we enter, is the room, without a shred of furniture in it except theboards of two closed-in beds. The flooring is not steady, and here and there holeshave been eaten into the planks. You can scarcely stand upright beneath thedecaying ceiling. Worn boards and ragged walls, and the rusty ribs fallen from thefireplace, are all that meet your eyes, but I see a round, unsteady, waxcloth-coveredtable, with four books lying at equal distances on it. There are six prim chairs, twoof them not to be sat upon, backed against the walls, and between the window andthe fireplace a chest of drawers, with a snowy coverlet. On the drawers stands aboard with coloured marbles for the game of solitaire, and I have only to open thedrawer with the loose handle to bring out the dambrod. In the carved wood frameover the window hangs Jamie's portrait; in the only other frame a picture of Danielin the den of lions, sewn by Leeby in wool. Over the chimney-piece with its shells, in which the roar of the sea can be heard, are strung three rows of birds' eggs. Onceagain we might be expecting company to tea. The passage is narrow. There is a square hole between the rafters, and a ladderleading up to it. You may climb and look into the attic, as Jess liked to hear me callmy tiny garret-room. I am stiffer now than in the days when I lodged with Jessduring the summer holiday I am trying to bring back, and there is no need for me to 6ascend. Do not laugh at the newspapers with which Leeby papered the garret, norat the yarn Hendry stuffed into the windy holes. He did it to warm the house forJess. But the paper must have gone to pieces and the yarn rotted decades ago. I have kept the kitchen for the last, as Jamie did on the dire day of which I shallhave to tell. It has a flooring of stone now, where there used only to be hard earth, and a broken pane in the window is indifferently stuffed with rags. But it is theother window I turn to, with a pain at my heart, and pride and fondness too, thesquare foot of glass where Jess sat in her chair and looked down the bra