About thirty years ago there was at the top of the right-hand side
of Orange Street, in Polchester, a large stone house. I say "was";
the shell of it is still there, and the people who now live in it
are quite unaware, I suppose, that anything has happened to the
inside of it, except that they are certainly assured that their
furniture is vastly superior to the furniture of their predecessors.
They have a gramophone, a pianola, and a lift to bring the plates
from the kitchen into the dining-room, and a small motor garage at
the back where the old pump used to be, and a very modern rock
garden where once was the pond with the fountain that never worked.
Let them cherish their satisfaction. No one grudges it to them. The
Coles were, by modern standards, old-fashioned people, and the Stone
House was an old-fashioned house.

Young Jeremy Cole was born there in the year 1884, very early in the
morning of December 8th. He was still there very early in the
morning of December 8th, 1892. He was sitting up in bed. The cuckoo
clock had just struck five, and he was aware that he was, at this
very moment, for the first time in his life, eight years old. He had
gone to bed at eight o'clock on the preceding evening with the
choking consciousness that he would awake in the morning a different
creature. Although he had slept, there had permeated the texture of
his dreams that same choking excitement, and now, wide awake, as
though he had asked the cuckoo to call him in order that he might
not be late for the great occasion, he stared into the black
distance of his bedroom and reflected, with a beating heart, upon
the great event. He was eight years old, and he had as much right
now to the nursery arm-chair with a hole in it as Helen had.