The next September we moved. Our new house was large and handsome. On
the south side there was nothing between it and the sea, except a few
feet of sand. No tree or shrub intercepted the view. To the eastward a
promontory of rocks jutted into the sea, serving as a pier against
the wash of the tide, and adding a picturesqueness to the curve of the
beach. On the north side flourished an orchard, which was planted by
Grandfather Locke. Looking over the tree-tops from the upper north
windows, one would have had no suspicion of being in the neighborhood
of the sea. From these windows, in winter, we saw the nimbus of the
Northern Light. The darkness of our sky, the stillness of the night,
mysteriously reflected the perpetual condition of its own solitary
world. In summer ragged white clouds rose above the horizon, as if
they had been torn from the sky of an underworld, to sail up the
blue heaven, languish away, or turn livid with thunder, and roll off
seaward. Between the orchard and the house a lawn sloped easterly to
the border of a brook, which straggled behind the outhouses into a
meadow, and finally lost itself among the rocks on the shore. Up by
the lawn a willow hung over it, and its outer bank was fringed by
the tangled wild-grape, sweet-briar, and alder bushes. The premises,
except on the seaside, were enclosed by a high wall of rough granite.
No houses were near us, on either side of the shore; up the north road
they were scattered at intervals.

Mother said I must be considered a young lady, and should have my own
room. Veronica was to have one opposite, divided from it by a wide
passage. This passage extended beyond the angle of the stairway, and
was cut off by a glass door. A wall ran across the lower end of the
passage; half the house was beyond its other side, so that when the
door was fastened, Veronica and myself were in a cul-de-sac.

The establishment was put on a larger footing. Mrs. Hepsey Curtis was
installed mistress of the kitchen. Temperance declared that she could
not stand it; that she wasn't a nigger; that she must go, but she had
no home, and no friends--nothing but a wood lot, which was left her
by her father the miller. As the trees thereon grew, promising to make
timber, its value increased; at present her income was limited to the
profit from the annual sale of a cord or two of wood. So she staid on,
in spite of Hepsey. There were also two men for the garden and stable.
A boy was always