ng out to me one day a great square figure
in one, and telling me she used to keep house there with her dolls for
lack of a better play-house, and if one of them chanced to fall outside
the boundary stripe, it was immediately put to bed with a cold. It is a
house with great possibilities; it might easily be made charming. There
are four very large rooms on the lower floor, and six above, a wide hall
in each story, and a fascinating garret over the whole, where were many
mysterious old chests and boxes, in one of which we found Kate's
grandmother's love-letters; and you may be sure the vista of rummages
which Mr. Lancaster had laughed about was explored to its very end. The
rooms all have elaborate cornices, and the lower hall is very fine, with
an archway dividing it, and panellings of all sorts, and a great door at
each end, through which the lilacs in front and the old pensioner
plum-trees in the garden are seen exchanging bows and gestures. Coming
from the Lancasters' high city house, it did not seem as if we had to go
up stairs at all there, for every step of the stairway is so broad and
low, and you come half-way to a square landing with an old
straight-backed chair in each farther corner; and between them a large,
round-topped window, with a cushioned seat, looking out on the garden
and the village, the hills far inland, and the sunset beyond all. Then
you turn and go up a few more steps to the upper hall, where we used to
stay a great deal. There were more old chairs and a pair of remarkable
sofas, on which we used to deposit the treasures collected in our
wanderings. The wide window which looks out on the lilacs and the sea
was a favorite seat of ours. Facing each other on either side of it are
two old secretaries, and one of them we ascertained to be the
hiding-place of secret drawers, in which may be found valuable records
deposited by ourselves one rainy day when we first explored it. We
wrote, between us, a tragic "journal" on some yellow old letter-paper we
found in the desk. We put it in the most hidden drawer by itself, and
flatter ourselves that it will be regarded with great interest some time
or other. Of one of the front rooms, "the best chamber," we stood rather
in dread. It is very remarkable that there seem to be no ghost-stories
connected with any part of the house, particularly this. We are neither
of us nervous; but there is certainly something dismal about the room.
The huge curtained bed and imm