old times were good enough for her. She had never
seen a steam engine, though she had heard "the dratted thing" screech in
the distance. In her day, when gentlefolk traveled, they went in
their own coaches. She didn't see how respectable people could bring
themselves down to "riding in a car with rag-tag and bobtail and
Lord-knows-who." Poor old aristocrat The landlord charged her no rent
for the room, and the neighbors took turns in supplying her with meals.
Towards the close of her life--she lived to be ninety-nine--she grew very
fretful and capricious about her food. If she didn't chance to fancy
what was sent her, she had no hesitation in sending it back to the giver
with "Miss Jocelyn's respectful compliments."

But I have been gossiping too long--and yet not too long if I have
impressed upon the reader an idea of what a rusty, delightful old town
it was to which I had come to spend the next three or four years of my
boyhood.

A drive of twenty minutes from the station brought us to the door-step
of Grandfather Nutter's house. What kind of house it was, and what sort
of people lived in it, shall be told in another chapter.

Chapter Five--The Nutter House and the Nutter Family

The Nutter House--all the more prominent dwellings in Rivermouth are
named after somebody; for instance, there is the Walford House, the
Venner House, the Trefethen House, etc., though it by no means follows
that they are inhabited by the people whose names they bear--the Nutter
House, to resume, has been in our family nearly a hundred years, and
is an honor to the builder (an ancestor of ours, I believe), supposing
durability to be a merit. If our ancestor was a carpenter, he knew his
trade. I wish I knew mine as well. Such timber and such workmanship
don't often come together in houses built nowadays.

Imagine a low-studded structure, with a wide hall running through the
middle. At your right band, as you enter, stands a tall black mahogany
clock, looking like an Egyptian mummy set up on end. On each side of
the hall are doors (whose knobs, it must be confessed, do not turn very
easily), opening into large rooms wainscoted and rich in wood-carvings
about the mantel-pieces and cornices. The walls are covered with
pictured paper, representing landscapes and sea-views. In the parlor,
for example, this enlivening figure is repeated all over the room. A
group of English peasants, wearing Italian hats, are dancing on a lawn
that abru