I will describe this
old-world abode, not as I first saw it, for when I first visited my
aunts Amelia and Deborah, I was only one year old, but as I first
remember it--a house with the glamour of a many-gabled roof and
diamond window-panes.
The house stood by the side of the turnpike road--that broad, white,
interminable road, originating from goodness knows where in the north,
and passing through Ayr--the nearest town of any importance--to
goodness knows where in the south. A shady avenue, entered by a wooden
swing gate bearing the superscription "Hennersley" in neat, white
letters, led by a circuitous route to it, and not a vestige of it
could be seen from the road. In front of it stretched a spacious lawn,
flanked on either side and at the farthest extremity by a thick growth
of chestnuts, beeches, poplars, and evergreens.
The house itself was curiously built. It consisted of two storeys, and
formed a main building and one wing, which gave it a peculiarly
lop-sided appearance that reminded me somewhat ludicrously of
Chanticleer, with a solitary, scant, and clipped appendage.
It was often on the tip of my tongue to ask my relatives the reason of
this singular disparity; whether it was the result of a mere whim on
the part of the architect, or whether it had been caused by some
catastrophe; but my curiosity was always held in check by a strange
feeling that my relatives would not like to be approached on the
subject. My aunts Amelia and Deborah belonged to that class of
people, unhappily rare, who possess a power of generating in others an
instinctive knowledge of "dangerous ground"--a power which enabled
them to avert, both from themselves and the might-be offender, many a
painful situation.
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