" Owing to this the
bedroom windows, which looked westward on the garden, were a great height
from the ground, and the building had a Gothic character.
Still there was much to justify the term cottage. The door, which looked
southward on the road, was at the side of the building, and opened, not
into a hall, but into the one large sitting-room, which was thirty feet
long and twenty-five feet broad, and instead of a plaster ceiling there
were massive joists, which Hope had gilded and painted till they were a
sight to behold. Another cottage feature: the walls were literally
clothed with verdure and color; in front, huge creeping geraniums,
jasmine, and Virginia creepers hid the brick-work; and the western walls,
to use the words of a greater painter than ourselves, were
"Quite overcanopied with lush woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses, and with eglantine."
In the next place, the building stood in a genuine cottage garden. It was
close to the road. The southern boundary was plain oak paling, made of
upright pieces which Hope had varnished so that the color was now a fine
amber; the rest of the boundary was a quick-set hedge, in the western
division of which stood an enormous oak-tree, hollow at the back.
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