sun a little too bright for the fly at present; and will you
not, in the meanwhile, show me over the house?"

"Very well; not that this house has much worth seeing. The other indeed
would have had a music-room! But, after all, nothing like the open air
for the flute. This way."

I spare thee, gentle reader, the minute inventory of Fawley Manor House.
It had nothing but its antiquity to recommend it. It had a great many
rooms, all, except those used as the dining-room and library, very
small, and very low,--innumerable closets, nooks,--unexpected cavities,
as if made on purpose for the venerable game of hide-and-seek. Save
a stately old kitchen, the offices were sadly defective even for Mr.
Darrell's domestic establishment, which consisted but of two men and
four maids (the stablemen not lodging in the house). Drawing-room
properly speaking that primitive mansion had none. At some remote
period a sort of gallery under the gable roofs (above the first floor),
stretching from end to end of the house, might have served for the
reception of guests on grand occasions; for fragments of mouldering
tapestry still here and there clung to the walls; and a high
chimney-piece, whereon, in plaster relief, was commemorated the
memorable fishing party of Antony and Cleopatra, retained patches of
colour and gilding, which must when fresh have made the Egyptian queen
still more appallingly hideous, and the fish at the end of Antony's hook
still less resembling any creature known to ichthyologists.

The library had been arranged into shelves from floor to roof by Mr.
Darrell's father, and subsequently, for the mere purpose of holding
as many volumes as possible, brought out into projecting wings
(college-like) by Darrell himself, without any pretension to mediaeval
character. With this room communicated a small reading-closet, which
the host reserved to himself; and this, by a circular stair cut into the
massive wall, ascended first into Mr. Darrell's sleeping-chamber, and
thence into a gable recess that adjoined the gallery, and which the host
had fitted up for the purpose of scientific experiments in chemistry or
other branches of practical philosophy. These more private rooms Lionel
was not permitted to enter. Altogether the house was one of those cruel
tenements which it would be a sin to pull down, or even materially to
alter, but which it would be an hourly inconvenience for a modern
family to inhabit. It was out of all character