good terms with each other. How gallantly he extended,--not his arm, in
our modern Jack-and-Jill sort of fashion, but his right hand to my
mother; how carefully he led her over "brake, bush, and scaur," through
the low vaulted door, where a tall servant, who, it was easy to see, had
been a soldier,--in the precise livery, no doubt, warranted by the
heraldic colors (his stockings were red!),--stood upright as a sentry.
And coming into the hall, it looked absolutely cheerful,--it took us by
surprise. There was a great fireplace, and, though it was still summer,
a great fire! It did not seem a bit too much, for the walls were stone,
the lofty roof open to the rafters, while the windows were small and
narrow, and so high and so deep sunk that one seemed in a vault.
Nevertheless, I say the room looked sociable and cheerful,--thanks
principally to the fire, and partly to a very ingenious medley of old
tapestry at one end, and matting at the other, fastened to the lower
part of the walls, seconded by an arrangement of furniture which did
credit to my uncle's taste for the picturesque. After we had looked
about and admired to our heart's content, Roland took us, not up one of
those noble staircases you see in the later manorial residences, but a
little winding stone stair, into the rooms he had appropriated to his
guests. There was first a small chamber, which he called my father's
study,--in truth, it would have done for any philosopher or saint who
wished to shut out the world, and might have passed for the interior of
such a column as the Stylites inhabited; for you must have climbed a
ladder to have looked out of the window, and then the vision of no
short-sighted man could have got over the interval in the wall made by
the narrow casement, which, after all, gave no other prospect than a
Cumberland sky, with an occasional rook in it. But my father, I think I
have said before, did not much care for scenery, and he looked round
with great satisfaction upon the retreat assigned him.