All the furniture in the house
was Elizabethan, plain, ponderous, the conscientious work of Oxfordshire
mechanics. On one side of the house there was a bowling green, on the
other a physic garden, where odours of medicinal herbs, camomile, fennel,
rosemary, rue, hung ever on the surrounding air. There was nothing modern
in Lady Warner's house but the spotless cleanliness; the perfume of last
summer's roses and lavender; the polished surface of tables and cabinets,
oak chests and oak floors, testifying to the inexorable industry of rustic
housemaids. In all other respects the Grange was like a house that had just
awakened from a century of sleep.
Lady Warner rose from her high-backed chair by the chimney corner in the
oak parlour, and laid aside the book she had been reading, to welcome her
son, startled at seeing him followed by a tall, fair girl in a black mantle
and hood, and a little slip of a thing, with bright dark eyes and small
determined face, pert, pointed, interrogative, framed in swansdown--a small
aerial figure in a white cloth cloak, and a scarlet brocade frock, under
which two little red shoes danced into the room.
"Mother, I have brought Mrs. Angela Kirkland and her niece to visit you
this Christmas morning.
Pages:
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232