The Hillyars and the Burtons by Henry Kingsley

In due time,--that is to say, a fortnight after my fifteenth birthday,--we moved into the new house. It was eight o'clock on a bright summer's morning when my father got the key from Mr. Long, unlocked the gate in the broken palings which surrounded the house, and passed into the yard, surrounded by his whole awe-stricken family.

There was no discovery made in the yard. It was commonplace. A square flagged space, with a broken water-buit in one corner under an old-- fashioned leaden gargoyle. There was also a grindstone, and some odd bits of timber which lay about near the pump, which was nearly grown up with nettles and ryegrass. In front of me, as I stood in the yard, the great house rose, flushed with the red blaze of the morning sun; behind were the family,--Joe leaning on his crutch, with his great eyes staring out of his head in eager curiosity; after him the group of children, clustered round Emma, who carried in her arms my brother Fred, a large-headed stolid child of two, who was chronically black and blue in every available part of his person with accidents, and who was, even now, evidently waiting for an opportunity to distinguish himself in that line.