The Lindsays, Volume II by John K. Leys

In a garden, the garden of a large old-fashioned house on Highgate Hill, a girl sat with a book in her hand, dreaming, on a July afternoon.

The scene was a thoroughly English one. Behind the garden-seat rose the gray brick walls of the house. It was old without being in the least degree venerable, ugly without looking positively mean. Its size redeemed it from that -- its size, and a certain air of comfortableness that belongs only to English homes. High walls shut out the sight of the new garish houses of red brick, and the sounds from the road, which of late years had become very much like a street. Within the lofty garden walls, order, comfort, propriety were supreme -- they were not likely to be replaced by any other principles so long as Sophy Meredith reigned at Grove House. The lawn exactly resembled a carpet; not a weed was to be seen in gravel-walk or in flower-bed; the rose-trees had just so much liberty as would prevent their appearing formal, not a fraction more. But the principle of order was, after all, subservient to that of comfort. Books and magazines, garden-chairs, and bits of feminine ‘work' lay about. On one side stood an invalid's chair.