They won't let me play with
it, but I can feel it's behaving badly. Hit it!"
I looked on either side of the deep fireplace, and found but a
half-charred hedge-stake with which I punched a black log into flame.
"It never goes out, day or night," she said, as though explaining. "In
case any one conies in with cold toes, you see."
"It's even lovelier inside than it was out," I murmured. The red light
poured itself along the age-polished dusky panels till the Tudor roses
and lions of the gallery took colour and motion. An old eagle-topped
convex mirror gathered the picture into its mysterious heart, distorting
afresh the distorted shadows, and curving the gallery lines into the
curves of a ship. The day was shutting down in half a gale as the fog
turned to stringy scud. Through the uncurtained mullions of the broad
window I could see valiant horsemen of the lawn rear and recover against
the wind that taunted them with legions of dead leaves.
"Yes, it must be beautiful," she said. "Would you like to go over it?
There's still light enough upstairs."
I followed her up the unflinching, wagon-wide staircase to the gallery
whence opened the thin fluted Elizabethan doors.
"Feel how they put the latch low down for the sake of the children." She
swung a light door inward.
"By the way, where are they?" I asked. "I haven't even heard them to-day."
She did not answer at once.
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