None were exempt, and those who were not
employed in porterage and rough carpentry might be found shifting
furniture, or stitching curtains, or jointing together bedsteads.
Meanwhile, workmen in and round the hotel were as busy as
stage-carpenters preparing a transformation scene. First, by the
elimination of carpets and furniture, the interior was reduced to a
_tabula rasa_. Then, in the somewhat weather-beaten top story,
plastering and surface-washing went briskly on. Our hosts assured us no
hands could be found for this work, but the Headmaster made a descent
upon Aberystwith and returned with the required number. A contractor was
fitting the large coffee-rooms, the billiard-room and others, and the
ground-floor corridor from end to end, with long narrow tables--plain
deal boards on wooden trestles--for the accommodation of three hundred
diners. Outside, the stables were converted into the school carpentery,
and the coach-house into a gymnasium. Above all, a wooden school-room,
eighty-three feet by twenty, had been designed, and its site marked out
on the north side of the enclosure behind the hotel.
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