admiration and satisfaction the exterior of his house.
He looked at the semicircular porch of stone over the front door and
venerated the supporting cherubs who with puffed-out cheeks had blown
defiance at wind and rain since the days of Elizabeth. He counted the
nine windows, five above and four below, populating with the shapes of
many friends the rooms they lightened. He looked at the steep roof of
gray-stone tiles rich with the warm golden green of mossy patterns. He
looked at the four pear-trees against the walls of the house barren now
for many years. He looked at himself in silhouette against the silver
sky of the well-water; and then he went indoors.

The big stone-paved hall was very cool, and the sound of the stream at
the back came babbling through lattices open to the light of a green
world. Guy could not make up his mind whether the inside of the house
smelled very dry or very damp, for there clung about it that odor
peculiar to rustic age, which may be found equally in dry old barns and
in damp potting-sheds. He wished he could furnish the hall worthily. At
present it contained only a high-back chair, an alleged contemporary of
Cromwell, which was doddering beside the hooded fireplace; a
warming-pan; and an oak chest which remained a chest only so long as
nobody either sat upon it or lifted the lid. There was also a
grandfather-clock which had suffered an abrupt resurrection of four
minutes' duration when it was recently lifted out of the furniture-van,
but had now relapsed into the silence of years. Leading out of the hall
was a small, empty room which had been dedicated to the possession of
his friend Michael Fane; together they had planned to paper it with gold
and paint the ceiling black. Michael, however, had still another year at
Oxford, and the room with an obelisk of lining-paper standing upright on
the bare floor was now a little desolate. On the other side of the hall
was the dining-room, which Guy, by taxing his resources, had managed to
furnish very successfully. It was a square room painted emerald-green
above the white wainscot. Two inset cupboards were filled with glass and
china: there were four Chippendale chairs and an oval Sheraton table,
curtains of purple silk, some old English water-colors, and two
candlesticks of Sheffield plate. Beyond the dining-room was the kitchen,
the corridor to which was endowed with a swinging baize door considered
by the landlord to be the finest feature of t