Page 959 - vanity-fair

Chapter LXI

In Which Two Lights

are Put Out

There came a day when the round of decorous pleasures
and solemn gaieties in which Mr. Jos Sedley’s family in-
dulged was interrupted by an event which happens in most
houses. As you ascend the staircase of your house from the
drawing towards the bedroom floors, you may have re-
marked a little arch in the wall right before you, which at
once gives light to the stair which leads from the second sto-
ry to the third (where the nursery and servants’ chambers
commonly are) and serves for another purpose of utility, of
which the undertaker’s men can give you a notion. They rest
the coffins upon that arch, or pass them through it so as not
to disturb in any unseemly manner the cold tenant slum-
bering within the black ark.
That second-floor arch in a London house, looking up
and down the well of the staircase and commanding the
main thoroughfare by which the inhabitants are passing; by
which cook lurks down before daylight to scour her pots
and pans in the kitchen; by which young master stealthily

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