its pillared door. The
hound had gone off on his own foolish quests. Except for some stir it
the branches and the flight of four startled magpies; there was neither
life nor sound about the square house, but it looked out of its long
windows most friendlily.

"Cha-armed to meet you, I'm sure," said Sophie, and curtsied to the
ground. "George, this is history I can understand. We began here." She
curtsied again.

The June sunshine twinkled on all the lights. It was as though an old
lady, wise in three generations' experience, but for the present sitting
out, bent to listen to her flushed and eager grandchild.

"I must look!" Sophie tiptoed to a window, and shaded her eyes with her
hand. "Oh, this room's half-full of cotton-bales--wool, I suppose! But I
can see a bit of the mantelpiece. George, do come! Isn't that some one?"

She fell back behind her husband. The front door opened slowly, to show
the hound, his nose white with milk, in charge of an ancient of days
clad in a blue linen ephod curiously gathered on breast and shoulders.

"Certainly," said George, half aloud. "Father Time himself. This is
where he lives, Sophie."

"We came," said Sophie weakly. "Can we see the house? I'm afraid that's
our dog."

"No, 'tis Rambler," said the old man. "He's been, at my swill-pail
again. Staying at Rocketts, be ye? Come in. Ah! you runagate!"

The hound broke from him, and he tottered after him down the drive. They
entered the hall--just such a high light hall as such a house
should own. A slim-balustered staircase, wide and shallow and once
creamy-white, climbed out of it under a long oval window. On either side
delicately moulded doors gave on to wool-lumbered rooms, whose sea-green
mantelpieces were adorned with nymphs, scrolls, and Cupids in low
relief.

"What's the firm that makes these things?" cried Sophie, enraptured.
"Oh, I forgot! These must be the originals. Adams, is it? I never
dreamed of anything like that steel-cut fender. Does he mean us to go
everywhere?"

"He's catching the dog," said George, looking out. "We don't count."

They explored the first or ground floor, delighted as children playing
burglars.

"This is like all England," she said at last. "Wonderful, but no
explanation. You're expected to know it beforehand. Now, let's try
upstairs."

The stairs never creaked beneath their feet. From the broad landing
they entered a long, green-panelled room lighted by three full-length
windows, wh