Farther along the same passage I
found the kitchen and other domestic offices. The kitchen clock was just
on the point of six as I went in. One servant alone had come down. From
her I inquired my way into the garden, and next minute I was on the
lawn. The close-cropped grass was wet with the heavy dew; but my boots
were thick and I heeded it not, for the flowers were there within my
very grasp.
Oh, those flowers! can I ever forget them? I have seen none so beautiful
since. There can be none so beautiful out of Paradise.
One spray of scarlet geranium was all that I ventured to pluck. But the
odours and the colours were there for all comers, and were as much mine
for the time being as if the flowers themselves had belonged to me.
Suddenly I turned and glanced up at the many-windowed house with a sort
of guilty consciousness that I might possibly be doing wrong. But the
house was still asleep--closed shutters or down-drawn blind at every
window. I saw before me a substantial-looking red-brick mansion, with a
high slanting roof, of not undignified appearance now that it was
mellowed by age, but with no pretensions to architectural beauty. The
sole attempt at outside ornamentation consisted of a few flutings of
white stone, reaching from the ground to the second floor, and
terminating in oval shields of the same material, on which had
originally been carved the initials of the builder and the date of
erection; but the summer's sun and the winter's rain of many a long year
had rubbed both letters and figures carefully out.
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