1 8 Buz. 



rect about it ; and no architect, traveling through 

 the countiy to pick up hints, would have thought 

 of pulling out his book of plans to take a copy. You 

 couldn't copy it — that was just the beauty of it ; but 

 no artist could possibly pass it without taking off a 

 lot of sketches of odd bits and corners here and 

 there, or without being delighted with the pictur- 

 esque old place. 



And inside ! Was there ever such a place for 

 children to play hide-and-seek in ? There were really 

 no end of long passages, and big cupboards, and tiny 

 rooms ; while, as for stairs ! they were here, there, 

 and everywhere : almost every room had two or 

 three steps leading up to it, or two or three steps 

 leading down to it ; for the architect, or rather archi- 

 tects (there must have been a dozen of them 

 employed at different times), seemed to have said, 

 " No, we won't have any two rooms exactly on the 

 same level — not if we can help it." Some of the 

 rooms had windows that looked down into the old 

 hall; others had managed to get so exactly into the 

 middle of the house that there was nothing for it 

 but to light them from the next room ; but that 

 didn't matter a bit : they did famously for keeping 

 bandboxes and odd things in, and there were heaps 

 of rooms to spare. Nowadays, people wouldn't like 



