Page:Navvies and Their Needs.djvu/25

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NAVVIES AND THEIR NEEDS.
21

chairs, and perhaps an arm-chair for the special use of the landlord. The walls are more or less decorated, according to the taste of the inmates, and the beams, which run across just within reach, are hung with men's clothes, handkerchiefs, and so on. At one end of the room is the range, and at the other a door leading into an inner apartment. This inner room is rather smaller than the other, and is generally used as the men's sleeping room. In this case it is furnished with five large wooden bedsteads, constructed in very simple fashion, and each one supposed to accommodate two men. Above this room, and in the slope of the roof, is another which is reached by a ladder from the outer room, and which is generally occupied by the landlord and his family. In some cases, however, this arrangement is reversed, and the lodgers are stowed away in the loft. In the first hut we enter we find a number of men gathered round the fire. All are smoking, some reading, some talking, while at the table a game of dominoes is going on. We notice that the favourite periodicals seen to be of the lower-class newspaper kind. Some of the men take no notice whatever of our presence, and make no reply to our greeting. Some, on the other hand, make a move, and invite us to a chair near the fire, and from one or two we get a welcome which is cordial, if not loudly expressed. We ask for the land-lady; one of the men calls to her, and she appears at the top of the ladder leading to the upper room. "Come up, if you please, sir," she says; and we go, knowing that it is there we are most wanted. It is a terribly close room that we enter, with a sickly smell that tells of over-crowding. There are three beds in the small space, one of which is occupied by the patient