of each of the
twelve chimneys; that a lady and a lap-dog stood on the lawn in a
strenuously walking position; and a substantial cloud and nine flying
birds of no known species hung over the trees to the north-east.

The rambling and neglected dwelling had all the romantic excellencies and
practical drawbacks which such mildewed places share in common with
caves, mountains, wildernesses, glens, and other homes of poesy that
people of taste wish to live and die in. Mustard and cress could have
been raised on the inner plaster of the dewy walls at any height not
exceeding three feet from the floor; and mushrooms of the most refined
and thin-stemmed kinds grew up through the chinks of the larder paving.
As for the outside, Nature, in the ample time that had been given her,
had so mingled her filings and effacements with the marks of human wear
and tear upon the house, that it was often hard to say in which of the
two or if in both, any particular obliteration had its origin. The
keenness was gone from the mouldings of the doorways, but whether worn
out by the rubbing past of innumerable people's shoulders, and the moving
of their heavy furniture, or by Time in a grander and more abstract form,
did not appear. The iron stanchions inside the window-panes were eaten
away to the size of wires at the bottom where they entered the stone, the
condensed breathings of generations having settled there in pools and
rusted them. The panes themselves had either lost their shine altogether
or become iridescent as a peacock's tail. In the middle of the porch was
a vertical sun-dial, whose gnomon swayed loosely about when the wind
blew, and cast its shadow hither and thither, as much as to say, 'Here's
your fine model dial; here's any time for any man; I am an old dial; and
shiftiness is the best policy.'

Anne passed under the arched gateway which screened the main front; over
it was the porter's lodge, reached by a spiral staircase. Across the
archway was fixed a row of wooden hurdles, one of which Anne opened and
closed behind her. Their necessity was apparent as soon as she got
inside. The quadrangle of the ancient pile was a bed of mud and manure,
inhabited by calves, geese, ducks, and sow pigs surprisingly large, with
young ones surprisingly small. In the groined porch some heifers were
amusing themselves by stretching up their necks and licking the carved
stone capitals that supported the vaulting. Anne went on to a seco