You have an accurate picture of what goes on during all the snowy months
on that wild North water!
CHAPTER III.
THE PLOTTER.
An old gentleman and a tall girl were walking in the secluded grounds of
a great house that had once belonged to an unhappy Prince. The place was
very near London, yet that suggestive hum of the City never seemed to
pierce the deep glades of the park; the rooks talked and held councils,
and tried culprits, and stole, and quarrelled as freely as they might
have done in the wilds of Surrey or Wiltshire; the rabbits swarmed, and
almost every south-country species of wild bird nested and enjoyed life
in the happy, still woods and shrubberies. Modern--very
modern--improvements had been added to the body of the old house, but
there was nothing vulgar or ostentatious. Everything about the place,
from the old red palace to the placid herd of Alderney cows that grazed
in a mighty avenue, spoke of wealth--wealth solid and well-rooted. There
was no sign of shoddy anywhere; the old gentleman had bought the place
at an enormous price, and he had left all the ancient work untouched;
but he would have stables, laundry, tennis-court, and so on through the
offices and outside buildings, fitted out according to rational
principles of sanitation, and, if the truth be told, he would rather
have seen healthy ugly stables than the most quaint and curious of
living-rooms that ever spread typhoid.
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