A straggling old house, painted yellow, and set down between a
corn-field and the village pasture for family cows; old walnut trees
growing close to its back and front, young walnut trees thrusting
themselves unhindered through beet and tomato patches, and even
through the roof of the hennery in the rear, which had been rebuilt to
accommodate them, spreading a heavy shade all about, picturesque but
unprofitable.

Old Peter Guinness used to sit on the doorstep every hot summer
evening, smoking his cigar, and watching the hens go clucking up to
roost in the lower branches and the cattle gathered underneath.

"What a godsend the trees are to those poor beasts!" he said a dozen
times every summer.

"Yes. We risk dampness and neuralgia and ague to oblige the town
cows," Mrs. Guinness would reply calmly.

"I shall cut them down this fall, Fanny. I'm not unreasonable, I hope.
Don't say a word more: I forgot your neuralgia, my dear. Down they
come!"

But they never did come down. Mrs. Guinness never expected them to
come down, any more than she expected Peter to give up his cigar.
When they were first married she explained to him daily the danger of
smoking, the effect of nicotine on the lungs, liver and stomach: then
she would appeal to him on behalf of his soul against this debasing
temptation of the devil. "It is such a gross way to fall," she would
plead--"such a mean, sensual appetite!"