They
could never have afforded, in the beginning, to possess
it had it not been sold, under mortgage, at a dramatic
sacrifice. The house was a dignified old affair, built
of wood and painted white, with wide green verandahs
compassing the four sides of it, as they often did in
days when the builder had only to turn his hand to the
forest. It stood on the very edge of the town; wheatfields
in the summer billowed up to its fences, and corn-stacks
in the autumn camped around it like a besieging army.
The plank sidewalk finished there; after that you took
the road or, if you were so inclined, the river, into
which you could throw a stone from the orchard of the
Plummer Place. The house stood roomily and shadily in
ornamental grounds, with a lawn in front of it and a
shrubbery at each side, an orchard behind, and a vegetable
garden, the whole intersected by winding gravel walks,
of which Mrs Murchison was wont to say that a man might
do nothing but weed them and have his hands full. In the
middle of the lawn was a fountain, an empty basin with
a plaster Triton, most difficult to keep looking respectable
and pathetic in his frayed air of exile from some garden
of Italy sloping to the sea. There was also a barn with
stabling, a loft, and big carriage doors opening on a
lane to the street.
Pages:
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42