obliged to wait until a boy should summon the old woman who had charge
of the house, and who was now at work in a neighbouring harvest-field,
to give us entrance.

* * * * *

------ the aged portress (Dame Wheeler, Susan's grandmother) had given
us admittance, and we soon stood on the steps in front of the house, in
calm survey of the scene before us. Hatherden was just the place to like
or not to like, according to the feeling of the hour; a respectable,
comfortable country house, with a lawn before, a paddock on one side, a
shrubbery on the other; offices and a kitchen garden behind, and the
usual ornaments of villas and advertisements, a greenhouse and a
veranda. Now my thoughts were _couleur de rose_, and Hatherden was
charming. Even the beds intended for flowers on the lawn, but which,
under a summer's neglect, were now dismal receptacles of seeds and
weeds, did not shock my gardening eye so much as my companion evidently
expected. "We must get my factotum, Clarke, here to-morrow," so ran my
thoughts, "to clear away that rubbish, and try a little bold
transplanting; late hollyhocks, late dahlias, a few pots of lobellias
and chrysanthemums, a few patches of coreopsis and china-asters, and
plenty of scarlet geraniums, will soon make this desolation flourishing.
A good gardener can move any thing now-a-days, whether in bloom or not,"
thought I, with much complacency, "and Clarke's a man to transplant
Windsor forest without withering a leaf. We'll have him to-morrow."

The same good disposition continued after I entered the house. And when
left alone in the echoing empty breakfast-room, with only one shutter
opened, whilst Dame Wheeler was guiding the companion of my survey to
the stableyard, I amused myself with making in my own mind, comparisons