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Their decayed walls, exhibiting the rude and massive architecture of the most remote period, were composed of a ragged grey-stone, which formed a singular contrast with the bright red freestone of which the window-cases, corner-stones, arches, and other ornamental parts of the building, were composed.

Househunting, under these circumstances, becomes an office of constant surprise and disconcertment to the stranger. You look, for example, at a suite of rooms in a tumble-down old palace, where the walls, shamelessly smarted up with coarse paper, crumble at your touch; where the floor rises and falls like the sea, and the door-frames and window-cases have long lost all recollection of the plumb.

Charlie followed Lucy, tip-toeing to the foot of the banister, where a platform-stair commanded a view of the kitchen. It was a very nice kitchen, with gas, hot water and cold, ranges and gas-stoves, and two great cupboards with glass doors through which all sorts of beautiful serving-dishes shone. Green ivies filled the window-cases, and geraniums lined the window-sills.

The window-cases, door-cases, and chimnys of all the house are marble. He showed me a black boy that he had, that died of a consumption, and being dead, he caused him to be dried in an oven, and lies there entire in a box. By and by to dinner, where his lady I find yet handsome, but hath been a very handsome woman: now is old.

He took us up and down with great respect, and showed us all his house and grounds; and it is a place not very moderne in the garden nor house, but the most uniforme in all that ever I saw; and some things to excess. The window-cases, door-cases, and chimnys of all the house are marble.

For the carved window-cases are hacked and beaten away, the wrought-iron railings are twisted and rusty, the marble steps are cracked and crumbling, the high ceilings with their heavy and ornate mouldings are seamed and discolored, and the massive oaken doors are cracked by many a rusty nail driven into them, holding ragged and worn-out garments.

He took us up and down with great respect, and showed us all his house and grounds; and it is a place not very moderne in the garden nor house, but the most uniforme in all that ever I saw; and some things to excess. The window-cases, door-cases, and chimnys of all the house are marble.

The green edging of the lamp-shade became like Maori greenstone rather than emerald. The sounds of the night without the house, and the starlight spreading pale lines along the edges of the window-cases, made the pall of black within more solemn and more mysterious.