rzel in another part of the field.

I sentimentalised and moralised--naturally; and naturally, too, I
thought of Catherine. Strange there should be that vein of hardness
running through the entire female sex.

As the rain still continued this afternoon, I proposed to Mrs. Anderson
she should show me the house. The excellent creature, busy with the
dairy, offered me Annie as her substitute. We went from cellar to
garret, and the child's companionship and her ingenuous prattle
successfully beguiled a couple of hours. The house in reality consists
of two houses placed at right angles to each other. The older part,
built between two and three hundred years ago, is inhabited by the
Andersons themselves. It consists of a long, low kitchen, with an
enormous hearth-place, an oaken settle, smoke-browned rafters, and a
bricked floor.

In the centre of the room is a massive but worm-eaten table, capable of
seating twenty persons at least. It was built up in the kitchen itself
some two hundred years ago, since no earthly ingenuity could have coaxed
it through the low windows or narrow door.

Two of these, latticed like those of my sitting room, with the door
between them, face west; but long before the sun is down the wooded
eminence opposite has intercepted all his beams. Outside is also a
garden, full of forget-me-not, daffodil, and other humble flowers. Here
Scot, the watch-dog, lies dreaming in his kennel, and beyond the gate
the cocks and hens lay dolefully in the rain, or bunch themselves up,
lumps of dirty feather, under the shelter of the wood shed.

Upstairs are three sleeping rooms, and the attics, with curious dormer
windows, still higher. We come down again to the first floor. A long
matted passage runs from one end of the house to the other. It sinks
half a step where the newer portion is joined on. This part, containing
in all four rooms, two here and two below, was built in July, 1793, as a
rudely scratched tablet on the wall outside informs me.

I sit with Annie on the carved chest at the southern end of the passage.
The window behind us gives an extensive view of grey rain and grey sea.
But I prefer to look at the smiling, freckled face that speaks so
eloquently of sunny days. The wet, trailing fingers of the briar-rose
climbing over the porch tap at the casement, the loose branch of the
plane-tree creaks in the wind, the distant sea moans and murmurs; but I
prefer to listen to my little friend's artless and