and prison-like
aspect.

Six dogs, two pet lambs, two or three pigs, about twenty fowls, eight
children which seemed a dozen, and Mrs M'Swat bundled out through the
back door at our approach. Those children, not through poverty--M'Swat
made a boast of his substantial banking account--but on account of
ignorance and slatternliness, were the dirtiest urchins I have ever seen,
and were so ragged that those parts of them which should have been
covered were exposed to view. The majority of them had red hair and wide
hanging-open mouths. Mrs M'Swat was a great, fat, ignorant,
pleasant-looking woman, shockingly dirty and untidy. Her tremendous,
flabby, stockingless ankles bulged over her unlaced hobnailed boots; her
dress was torn and unbuttoned at the throat, displaying one of the
dirtiest necks I have seen. It did not seem to worry her that the infant
she hold under her arm like a roll of cloth howled killingly, while the
other little ones clung to her skirts, attempting to hide their heads in
its folds like so many emus. She greeted me with a smacking kiss,
consigned the baby to the charge of the eldest child, a big girl of
fourteen, and seizing upon my trunks as though they were feather-weight,
with heavy clodhopping step disappeared into the house with them.
Returning, she invited me to enter, and following in her wake, I was
followed by the children through the dirtiest passage into the dirtiest
room, to sit upon the dirtiest chair, to gaze upon the other dirtiest
furniture of which I have ever heard. One wild horrified glance at the
dirt, squalor, and total benightedness that met me on every side, and I
trembled in every limb with suppressed emotion and the frantic longing to
get back to Caddagat which possessed me. One instant showed me that I
could never, never live here.

"Have ye had yer dinner?" my future mistress inquired in a rough
uncultivated voice. I replied in the negative.

"Sure, ye'll be dyin' of hunger; but I'll have it in a twinklin'."

She threw a crumpled and disgustingly filthy doth three-cornered ways on
to the dusty table and clapped thereon a couple of dirty knives and
forks, a pair of cracked plates, two poley cups and chipped saucers. Next
came a plate of salt meat, red with saltpetre, and another of dark, dry,
sodden bread. She then disappeared to the kitchen to make the tea, and
during her absence two of the little boys commenced to fight. One
clutched the tablecloth, and over went the who