with a great access of heartiness, and he laid his fishing-tackle
carefully on the long mahogany table in the entry, and motioned
Jerome to follow him into the room on the left.

Jerome had never been inside the house before, but this room had a
strangeness of its own which made him feel, when he entered, as if he
had crossed the border of a foreign land. It was typically unlike any
other room in the village. Jerome, whose tastes were as yet only
imitative and departed not from the lines to which they had been born
and trained, surveyed it with astonishment and some contempt. "No
carpet," he thought, "and no haircloth sofa, and no rocking-chair!"

He stared at the skins of bear and deer which covered the floor, at
the black settle with a high carven back, at a carved chest of black
oak, at the smaller pelts of wolf and fox which decorated walls and
chairs, at a great pair of antlers, and even a noble eagle sitting in
state upon the top of a secretary. Squire Merritt had filled this
room and others with his trophies of the chase, for he had been a
mighty hunter from his youth.

"Sit down, sir," he told Jerome, a little impatiently, for he longed
to be away for his fishing, and the stupid abstraction from purpose
which unwonted spectacles always cause in childhood are perplexing
and annoying to their elders, who cannot leave their concentration
for any sight of the eyes, if they wish.

He indicated a chair, at which Jerome, suddenly brought to himself,
looked dubiously, for it had a fine fox-skin over the back, and he
wondered if he might sit on it or should remove it.