"`----The little dogs and all,
Tray, Blanch, and Sweetheart, see, they bark at me!'"
cried Bracebridge, laughing. At the sound of his voice the bark
was changed into a yelp of delight, and in a moment he was
surrounded and almost overpowered by the caresses of the faithful
animals.
We had now come in full view of the old family mansion, partly
thrown in deep shadow and partly lit up by the cold moonshine. It
was an irregular building of some magnitude, and seemed to be of
the architecture of different periods. One wing was evidently
very ancient, with heavy stone-shafted bow windows jutting out
and overrun with ivy, from among the foliage of which the small
diamond-shaped panes of glass glittered with the moonbeams. The
rest of the house was in the French taste of Charles the Second's
time, having been repaired and altered, as my friend told me, by
one of his ancestors who returned with that monarch at the
Restoration. The grounds about the house were laid out in the old
formal manner of artificial flower-beds, clipped shrubberies,
raised terraces, and heavy stone balustrades, ornamented with
urns, a leaden statue or two, and a jet of water. The old
gentleman, I was told, was extremely careful to preserve this
obsolete finery in all its original state.
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