He shrugged his
shoulders at it, and, with his hands in his pockets,
turned toward the stables.
The stable-yard is, from some points of view,
the prettiest thing about Hadlow. There is a big,
uneven, grass-grown space, in the centre of which,
from a slight mound, springs an aged oak of tremendous
girth and height. All around this enclosure are buildings
of the same pale yellowish brick as the mansion itself,
but quaintly differing one from another in design and size.
Stables, carriage-houses, kennels, a laundry, a brewery,
and half a dozen structures the intention of which is
now somewhat uncertain--some flat-topped, some gabled,
others with turrets, or massive grouped chimneys, or overhanging
timbered upper stories--form round this unkempt, shadowed
green a sort of village, with a communal individuality of its own.
A glance shows its feudal relation to, and dependence
upon, the great house behind which it nestles;
some of the back-kitchens and offices of this
great house, indeed, straggle out till they meet and
merge themselves into this quadrangle. None the less,
it presents to the enquiring gaze a specific character,
of as old a growth, one might think, as the oak itself.
Here servants have lived, it may be, since man first learned
the trick of setting his foot on his brother's neck.
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