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A square but rather ornate porch, with fluted columns, supporting the outer edge of the roof, and an elaborately carved hall-door with a fanlight overhead. The stoop stood up some five steps, and at the sides there were benches for out-of-doors comfort on summer nights. A brass knocker, with a lion's head, announced visitors. Chilian, however, let himself in with his latchkey.
"Go out into the road and look at the fanlight," Bell directed. David complied eagerly. A sharp cry of surprise escaped him as he looked up. The change was apparent. Instead of the figures 218 he could read now the change to 219 a fairly indifferent 9, but one that would have passed muster without criticism by ninety-nine people out of a hundred.
Arbor vitæ trees in square wooden tubs on the broad top step each side of the doorway complete a formal treatment of dignity and attractiveness. Rarely occurred a doorway having a complete entablature above a fanlight surmounted by a pediment. The east and west entrances of Mount Pleasant offer two splendid examples, massive and dignified.
The houses were drab and ugly, with untidy grass-plots in front. They presented an exterior of three windows and a narrow round-topped hall-door which was a confession of poverty in itself. Five out of six houses had a ramping plaster horse in the fanlight of the hall door, a fixture which went with the house and was immune from breakage because no one ever thought of cleaning the fanlights.
As the post-boy let down the steps and threw open the carriage-door for me to alight, I could see through the fanlight over the door that there was a light in the hall, so I felt pretty certain that my uncle had not yet retired. I ran up the steps and gave the bell-handle a tug which speedily brought old Timothy to the door. "Has Sir Peregrine retired yet, Tim?" said I.
There is the same rustication of casings and jambs up to the height of the doors, but molded spandrils occupy the spaces each side of the round arch with its wide ornate keystone. Exceptionally broad tapering and fluted mullions lend distinction to the heavy fanlight sash with its round-ended openings. Neither of these doorways has the double projection of those previously described.
You wait till you see it. Imagine it, Rosalie, beneath that lovely old fanlight overhead. And then yellow window boxes tinted to match in every window and crammed with flowers. It'll be a house you'll run to get into directly you catch sight of it. Then inside here, in the hall, there'll be the thickest rugs money can buy and the brightest light and the warmest stove.
A Latin quotation, "Procuc este profans", meaning "Be far from here that which is unholy", is carved in the architrave casing over the fanlight. The columns are fluted, but have the Doric rather than the usual Corinthian capitals. Double blind doors such as are a feature of this entrance were the predecessor of the modern screen door.
Craning his neck and directing his glance through the glazed fanlight over the door of the apartment, he beheld a sight that was never to fade from his memory. In the bare and cheerless room, the conventional bourgeois "parlor," was the Emperor, seated at a table on which his plate was laid, lighted at either end by wax candles in great silver candelabra.
The street was still considered in the quality part of the town. The row was quite imposing, the stoops being high, the houses three stories and a half, with short windows just below the roof. The railing of the stoop was very ornate, the work around the front door and the fanlight at the top being of the old-fashioned decorative sort. They were ushered into the parlor by a young colored lad.
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