NELLY'S TALE ATMOSPHERE SPRAY

“Well, Mrs. Dean, it will be a charitable deed to tell me something of my neighbours: I feel I shall not rest if I go to bed; so be good enough to sit and chat an hour.”

“Oh, certainly, sir! I’ll just fetch a little sewing, and then I’ll sit as long as you please. But you’ve caught cold: I saw you shivering, and you must have some gruel to drive it out.”

A fireside chat over a basket of sewing, as snow falls outside Thrushcross Grange. Hearthsmoke and smoldering clove-dusted firewood, rivulets of beeswax dribbling into snow flurries.

1924 illustration by Percy Tarrant, courtesy of the British Library