The Dartmoor Enigma (2016)
“He put up at the station hotel, and ordered breakfast for as early as it could be served the following morning. While waiting for his meal he scrutinized the time-table of the motor-bus services to the neighbouring villages, and found that by leaving at 10 a.m. he would be in Abbott’s Ashton at 12.30. It seemed to him a favourable time for his visit on a Sunday morning. The whole family would be at home. The father, unless he were a sidesman at the church, would be in slippers and unshaved; the... mother not yet making preparations for the Sunday dinner.
Abbott’s Ashton proved to be a village of little more than a single street. One had only to walk from end to end to find “Chatsworth,” the chef-d’oeuvre of the local builder, expressed in red brick with a bay window for the family sitting-room, and a miniature brick tower surmounting the staircase. But Richardson was no architectural critic; he supposed that when the Dearborn family made its entry into this ambitious dwelling, with its pitch-pine staircase and tiled front hall, with its sitting-room in which no one ever sat and its dining-room in which the family sat all day, it considered that it had taken a step upwards in the social scale and was inclined to look down its nose at its neighbours.MoreLess
Abbott’s Ashton proved to be a village of little more than a single street. One had only to walk from end to end to find “Chatsworth,” the chef-d’oeuvre of the local builder, expressed in red brick with a bay window for the family sitting-room, and a miniature brick tower surmounting the staircase. But Richardson was no architectural critic; he supposed that when the Dearborn family made its entry into this ambitious dwelling, with its pitch-pine staircase and tiled front hall, with its sitting-room in which no one ever sat and its dining-room in which the family sat all day, it considered that it had taken a step upwards in the social scale and was inclined to look down its nose at its neighbours.MoreLess
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