.
I helped my Cousin Dorothy from her horse; and then all three of us went
through a side-door to the front of the house.

The house without was of timber and plaster, very solidly built, but in
no way pretentious; and the plaster was stamped, in panels, with a kind
of comb-pattern in half circles, peculiar, my cousin told me, to that
part of the country. Within, it was very pleasant. There was a little
passage as we came in, and to right and left lay the Great Chamber (as
it was called), and the dining-room. Beyond the little passage was the
staircase, panelled all the way up, with the instruments of the Passion
and other emblems carved on a row of the panels; and at the foot of the
staircase on the right lay a little parlour, very pretty, with hangings
presenting the knights of the Holy Grail riding upon their Quest. Upon
the left of the staircase, lay a paved hall, with a little pantry under
the stairs, to the left, and the kitchens running out to the back; and
opposite to them, enclosing a little grassed court, the brewhouse and
the bakehouse. Behind all lay the kitchen gardens; and behind the
brewhouse a row of old yews and a part of the lawn, that also ran before
the house. The house was of three stories high, and contained about
twenty rooms with the attics.

It is strange how some houses, upon a first acquaintance with them, seem
like old friends; and how others, though one may have lived in them
fifty years are never familiar to those who live in them. Now Hare
Street House was one of the first kind. This very day that I first set
eyes on it, it was as if I had lived there as a child. The sunlight
streamed into the Great Chamber, and past the yews into the parlour; and
upon the lawns outside; and the noise of the bees in the limes was as if
an organ played softly; and it was all to me as if I had known it a
hundred years.

My Cousin Tom carried me upstairs presently to the Guest-chamber--a
great panelled room, with a wide fire-place, above the dining-room--that
I might wash my hands and face before dinner; and my heart smote me a
little for all my thoughts of him, for, when all was said, he had
received me very hospitably, and was now bidding me welcome again, and
that I must live there as long as I would, and think of it as my home.

"And here," he said, opening a door at the foot of the bed, "is a little
closet where your man can hang your clothes; it looks out upon the yard;
and my room is beyond it, ove