Deephaven by Sarah Orne Jewett — Read

I do not know that the Brandon house is really very remarkable, but I / never have been in one that interested me in the same way. Kate used to / recount to select audiences at school some of her experiences with her / Aunt Katharine, and it was popularly believed that she once carried down / some indestructible picture-books when they were first in fashion, and / the old lady basted them for her to hem round the edges at the rate of / two a day. It may have been fabulous. It was impossible to imagine any / children in the old place; everything was for grown people; even the / stair-railing was too high to slide down on. The chairs looked as if / they had been put, at the furnishing of the house, in their places, and / there they meant to remain. The carpets were particularly interesting, / and I remember Kate's pointing out to me one day a great square figure / in one, and telling me she used to keep house there with her dolls for / lack of a better play-house, and if one of them chanced to fall outside / the boundary stripe, it was immediately put to bed with a cold. It is a / house with great possibilities; it might easily be made charming. There / are four very large rooms on the lower floor, and six above, a wide hall / in each story, and a fascinating garret over the whole, where were many / mysterious old chests and boxes, in one of which we found Kate's / grandmother's love-letters; and you may be sure the vista of rummages / which Mr. Lancaster had laughed about was explored to its very end.

The rooms all have elaborate cornices, and the lower hall is very fine, with / an archway dividing it, and panellings of all sorts, and a great door at / each end, through which the lilacs in front and the old pensioner / plum-trees in the garden are seen exchanging bows and gestures. Coming / from the Lancasters' high city house, it did not seem as if we had to go / up stairs at all there, for every step of the stairway is so broad and / low, and you come half-way to a square landing with an old / straight-backed chair in each farther corner; and between them a large, / round-topped window, with a cushioned seat, looking out on the garden / and the village, the hills far inland, and the sunset beyond all. Then / you turn and go up a few more steps to the upper hall, where we used to / stay a great deal. There were more old chairs and a pair of remarkable / sofas, on which we used to deposit the treasures collected in our / wanderings. The wide window which looks out on the lilacs and the sea / was a favorite seat of ours. Facing each other on either side of it are / two old secretaries, and one of them we ascertained to be the / hiding-place of secret drawers, in which may be found valuable records / deposited by ourselves one rainy day when we first explored it. We / wrote, between us, a tragic "journal" on some yellow old letter-paper we / found in the desk. We put it in the most hidden drawer by itself, and / flatter ourselves that it will be regarded with great interest some time / or other. Of one of the front rooms, "the best chamber," we stood rather / in dread. It is very remarkable that there seem to be no ghost-stories / connected with any part of the house, particularly this. We are neither / of us nervous; but there is certainly something dismal about the room.