The Man in Possession — page 25: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

20 THE MAN IN POSSESSION. and taxes to live in it, ‘tis the chape neighbourhood I'd be for choosing.” She threw down the rugs and parcels with which she was laden. A bright fire burnt in the grate. The bedroom looked cheerful, and was furnished with that due regard to comfort, almost indeed to luxury, which Cornelius O’Brien deemed only right and fitting for an Irish gentleman. <A small table by the fire was covered with a white cloth, on which stood a silver coffee service. The bed, with its snowy linen and satin eider-down coverlet, looked very inviting. It was a strange fact that, hampered as he was, by debts, duns and difficulties, Cornelius O’Brien always insisted that his own personal surroundings should be comfortable, and his own personal wants attended to. He had early impressed Kate and Biddy with this necessity, and they had managed to conform to it with more or less difficulty through all the shifts and straits that they had known. If ever an individual possessed a guileless inapt- itude for the management of worldly affairs that individual was Cornelius O’Brien, but he was not so guileless or ignorant that he did not know how to take very good care of his own comforts, and to administer to them with a supreme disdain of the inconvenience he afforded to any one else. As he came into the bedroom now and threw off his travelling wraps, he glanced round with supreme content at the various arrangements. ‘That's right, Biddy,” he said approvingly. ‘A good fire and a cup of coffee. Nothing like it COMicloe (Sri C(O)