It was raining, a miserable spring drizzle, yet the spacious hall
seemed flooded with sunlight. There's an oval skylight fitted with
amber glass; silhouetted against its leaded rims are outlined flying
birds.

"Hark, hark! The lark at heaven's gate sings!" I read beneath the
margins when I looked up to find the sunlight. I knew that I ought to
feel like an impertinent intruder but I just couldn't! And I defy any
one to go up those wonderful circling stairs and not smile! For at the
head of each flight of steps is a recessed niche such as used to be
built to hold statuary and in the one near the second floor is a flat
vase filled with flowers--little saffron rosebuds the day I passed by
--with an ever so discreet card engraved in sizable old English script
that hinted:

"One's for you."

I was still sniffing at my buttonhole when I reached the second niche.
There was a black varnished wicker tray heaped with fruit and a
Brittany platter filled with raison cookies.

"Aren't you hungry?" the card above them suggested. I nibbled an
apricot all the way up the third flight and almost laughed aloud when
I reached the top, though of course I was expecting something. There's
a yellow glazed vase there,

"For pits and stones
Or skins and bones"

and above it in the back of the niche through a marble dolphin's mouth