Read "My Merry Rockhurst" by Egerton Castle online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Storm without; and within, melancholy humours! -Without, fine, blinding, dry snow, driven in eddies against whatever obstacle it met: against the walls of Sir Paul Farrant's Manor House: against the holly and clipped yews of his garden: against the serried ranks of firs which screened his estate from the wild blasts that ride from the Downs up the great rise of Hindhead. Never more wildly, never more triumphantly, did the winds ride than on this night of the winter solstice, this Christmas Eve, the fifth since the happy date of his Most Gracious Majesty's Restoration.
Within, a fire of logs glowing under the huge mantelled chimney; rosy flicker on wainscot, glitter of crystal and silver on fair white napery, and a full-paunched bottle or two, dusty and cobwebbed; crocus flames of candles against the rose of the hearth-light and the brown of the oak. Cheerful enough surroundings, one would have deemed-a sort of room where a man might hug comfort with philosophic egotism and have the greater zest in it for the thought of the outside desolation; sip his glass to the tune of the wind; and toast his legs in luxury as he pictured to himself the circumstance of any poor devil who, upon such a night, still chanced to be on the road.