ich overlooked the forlorn wreck of a terraced garden, and
wooded slopes beyond.

"The drawing-room, of course." Sophie swam up and down it. "That
mantelpiece--Orpheus and Eurydice--is the best of them all. Isn't it
marvellous? Why, the room seems furnished with nothing in it! How's
that, George?"

"It's the proportions. I've noticed it."

"I saw a Heppelwhite couch once"--Sophie laid her finger to her flushed
cheek and considered. "With, two of them--one on each side--you wouldn't
need anything else. Except--there must be one perfect mirror over that
mantelpiece."

"Look at that view. It's a framed Constable," her husband cried.

"No; it's a Morland--a parody of a Morland. But about that couch,
George. Don't you think Empire might be better than Heppelwhite? Dull
gold against that pale green? It's a pity they don't make spinets
nowadays."

"I believe you can get them. Look at that oak wood behind the pines."

"'While you sat and played toccatas stately, at the clavichord,"' Sophie
hummed, and, head on one; side, nodded to where the perfect mirror
should hang:

Then they found bedrooms with dressing-rooms and powdering-closets, and
steps leading up and down--boxes of rooms, round, square, and octagonal,
with enriched ceilings and chased door-locks.

"Now about servants. Oh!" She had darted up the last stairs to the
chequered darkness of the top floor, where loose tiles lay among broken
laths, and the walls were scrawled with names, sentiments, and hop
records. "They've been keeping pigeons here," she cried.

"And you could drive a buggy through the roof anywhere," said George.

"That's what I say," the old man cried below them on the stairs. "Not a
dry place for my pigeons at all."

"But why was it allowed to get like this?" said Sophie.

"Tis with housen as teeth," he replied. "Let 'em go too far, and there's
nothing to be done. Time was they was minded to sell her, but none would
buy. She was too far away along from any place. Time was they'd ha'
lived here theyselves, but they took and died."

"Here?" Sophie moved beneath the light of a hole in the roof.

"Nah--none dies here excep' falling off ricks and such. In London they
died." He plucked a lock of wool from his blue smock. "They was no
staple--neither the Elphicks nor the Moones. Shart and brittle all
of 'em. Dead they be seventeen year, for I've been here caretakin'
twenty-five."

"Who does all the wool belong to downstairs?" George asked.