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The road from Surbiton and Epsom ran under the arch, and, like a bright fungoid growth in the ditch, there was now appearing a sort of fourth estate of little red-and-white rough-cast villas, with meretricious gables and very brassy window-blinds.
The bees and the wasps who, like me, ate them at their pleasure, tumbled on their backs and extended their legs in the air, overcome seemingly by the cloying sweetness of the fruit and the heat of the day. And on the neighboring roofs, between the old gothic gables, there were similar reed mats covered with these same plums, all visited by myriads of buzzing wasps and bees.
It had a tone unlike the dreary and sullen one which has bemoaned itself, and afflicted all mankind with miserable sympathy, for five days past. The wind has veered about! It now comes boisterously from the northwest, and, taking hold of the aged framework of the Seven Gables, gives it a shake, like a wrestler that would try strength with his antagonist.
It is from twelve hundred to about five thousand feet deep, and is comparatively narrow, but there are several roomy, park-like openings in it, and throughout its whole extent Yosemite natures are displayed on a grand scale domes, El Capitan rocks, gables, Sentinels, Royal Arches, Glacier Points, Cathedral Spires, etc.
The loftiest of the stages of this arcading has a sub-division with round arches; and the stage above the great stringcourse has round-headed trefoils so as to be in keeping with the row of similar arches in the gables; but with these two exceptions all the arches on the arcades of the tower are pointed and without cusps.
When they had reached Melchester, and walked to the Close, and the gables of the old building in which she was again to be immured rose before Sue's eyes, she looked a little scared. "I expect I shall catch it!" she murmured. They rang the great bell and waited. "Oh, I bought something for you, which I had nearly forgotten," she said quickly, searching her pocket.
The old town of Banbury, celebrated for its cakes, its Cross, and its fine lady who rode on a white horse accompanied by the sound of bells, has some excellent "black and white" houses with pointed gables and enriched barge-boards pierced in every variety of patterns, their finials and pendants, and pargeted fronts, which give an air of picturesqueness contrasting strangely with the stiffness of the modern brick buildings.
The tortuous wall girdle, long since snapped, of the little swollen city, half held in place by careful civic hands wanders in narrow file between parapets smoothed by peaceful generations, pausing here and there for a dismantled gate or a bridged gap, with rises and drops, steps up and steps down, queer twists, queer contacts, peeps into homely streets and under the brows of gables, views of cathedral tower and waterside fields, of huddled English town and ordered English country.
This gate is a surprise; a stupendous structure of two stories with huge sweeping curves of roof and enormous gables antique, Chinese, magnificent. It is more than four hundred years old, but seems scarcely affected by the wearing of the centuries.
In short, I make pictures out of sunshine; and, not to be too much dazzled with my own trade, I have prevailed with Miss Hepzibah to let me lodge in one of these dusky gables. It is like a bandage over one's eyes, to come into it. But would you like to see a specimen of my productions?"
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