The girls had observed, as they mounted the stairs, that though there was a green baize on the floor of the room below, a handsome mahogany chest of drawers, a tea-tray with a tiger upon it, and above it two fine pictures,--viz., the Duke of Wellington staring mightily upon his companion, a Madonna, as if meditating war against her child--though all these things testified to the means of comfort being in the house, there existed the deplorable discomfort of unmade beds late in the evening. A curl-papered girl, with a face grimed with dust from her loom, was lazily undrawing the curtains, and about to let in the fresh air for the first time that day. Mademoiselle did not know much about how far money went in this country; but she consulted with Charlotte as to whether the times ought to be called very bad by a family who earned respectively, three, five, ten, and twenty shillings a-week, besides letting two looms at three shillings per week each. Charlotte thought they must be so well off that it would be worth while to spare the second girl from her loom, and give her time to take her hair out of the paper with which it bristled, to make the beds in the cool air of the morning, to new paper the staircase, where tatters hung to gather the dust, revealing the most snug mouse-holes possible; to brush the green baize, polish the tiger, and dust the Duke of Wellington; and, finally, to purify the atmosphere of the weaving-room, by certain appliances which seemed at present not to be dreamed of. But Mrs. Ellis appeared to think that it would be time enough to clean when days of adversity should come. She resumed her curious velvet weaving, that the young ladies might observe the action of the machinery; in the course of which investigation Adèle was sensible of a descent of dust into her mouth as she looked up, and Lucy's cheek was tickled by a floating cobweb. Seeing the one make a grimace, and the other rub her cheek indignantly, Charlotte asked Mrs. Ellis how often she whitewashed. The lady with the locket smiled at the simplicity of such a question, addressed to a weaver; and when asked whether dust did not injure her work, she reached out her hand for a brush which lay near, gave one stroke with a skilful flourish, and looked with a triumphant face through the cloud she had just raised, as if to say, "You see!" Part of the gesture was, however, lost upon her visitors; for Mademoiselle had run to the window on the first hint of what was going to happen; Charlotte was coughing; and Lucy and Adèle had their hands before their faces. Mademoiselle returned, after awhile, to suggest a modest doubt whether it was not better to be without dust, than to brush it from one place that it might fall upon another--into Mrs. Ellis's weak lungs, among other receptacles; but Mrs. Ellis seemed to agree with old Short, that a loom would be nothing without cobwebs; and all that remained, therefore, was to ask about the auriculas.