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Updated: June 13, 2025
The expression of his face was that of King Charles I. as painted by Vandyke. Though large, he was unassuming. Pax, the pug, on the contrary, who came up to the first joint of Darkie's leg, stood defiantly on his dignity and his short stumps. He always placed himself in front of the bigger dog, and made a point of hustling him in door-ways and of going first down stairs.
All of the stone-work was well smoothed and squared; and while the exteriors of the houses were entirely plain, we could see through the open door-ways that the interiors of many of them were enriched with carvings.
When we ventured out, we were followed by the gaze of the whole town: people standing in their door-ways, old women popping their heads from the chamber-windows, and stalwart men idle on Saturday at e'en, after their week's hard labor clustering at the street-corners, merely to stare at our unpretending selves.
It so happened that we were a large party, having with us several mousmé guests, and from the moment that the rain began to fall from the skies, as if out of a watering-pot turned upside down, the band became disorganized. The mousmés run off, with birdlike cries, and take refuge under door-ways, in the shops, under the hoods of the djins.
The door-ways of the houses here are entirely too small to admit the bicycle, and that much-enduring vehicle has to take its chances on the low roof with a score or so inquisitive and meddlesome goats that instantly gather around it, as though revolving in their pugnacious minds some fell scheme of destruction.
Mrs Wilson ran in person to the door, and, having reconnoitred those who were so clamorous for admittance, through some secret aperture with which most Scottish door-ways were furnished for the express purpose, she returned wringing her hands in great dismay, exclaiming, "The red-coats! the red-coats!" "Robin Ploughman what ca' they ye?
"I must have seen one or another of them there," muttered the prefect. "Your cabinet-workers will have a busy time, Pontius." "Nay, the hanging-makers may be glad; wherever we can we will close the door-ways with heavy curtains." "And what will you do with this damp abode of fogs, which, if I mistake not, must adjoin the dining-hall?"
It was desperate walking here in the country where the sharp wind seemed to search out every unprotected part of the body. The snow nearly blinded her, and cut her face like a knife. Every little while she had to stop to get breath, and as she found the difficulties increasing she thought of all the stories she had heard of persons perishing in the snow a few yards from their own door-ways.
When I first peeped in at the gate of the lifeless quadrangle, and started from the mouldering statue becoming visible to me like its guardian ghost; when I stole round by the back of the farm-house, and got in among the ancient rooms, many of them with their floors and ceilings falling, the beams and rafters hanging dangerously down, the plaster dropping as I trod, the oaken panels stripped away, the windows half walled up, half broken; when I discovered a gallery commanding the old kitchen, and looked down between balustrades upon a massive old table and benches, fearing to see I know not what dead-alive creatures come in and seat themselves, and look up with I know not what dreadful eyes, or lack of eyes, at me; when all over the house I was awed by gaps and chinks where the sky stared sorrowfully at me, where the birds passed, and the ivy rustled, and the stains of winter weather blotched the rotten floors; when down at the bottom of dark pits of staircase, into which the stairs had sunk, green leaves trembled, butterflies fluttered, and bees hummed in and out through the broken door-ways; when encircling the whole ruin were sweet scents, and sights of fresh green growth, and ever-renewing life, that I had never dreamed of, I say, when I passed into such clouded perception of these things as my dark soul could compass, what did I know then of Hoghton Towers?
The company was scattered; some being seated together in conversation, others observing the works of art, others pacing the marble floors of the porticos, their forms crossing and recrossing the ample arched door-ways which opened upon them. 'We feared, said the Queen, advancing toward me as I entered, 'that we were not to be so happy as to see you.
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