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."