When I reached home, I went straight to Connie's room. Now the house was
one of a class to every individual of which, whatever be its style or
shape, I instantly become attached almost as if it possessed a measure of
the life which it has sheltered. This class of human dwellings consists
of the houses that have _grown_. They have not been, built after a
straight-up-and-down model of uninteresting convenience or money-loving
pinchedness. They must have had some plan, good, bad, or indifferent, as
the case may be, at first, I suppose; but that plan they have left far
behind, having grown with the necessities or ambitions of succeeding
possessors, until the fact that they have a history is as plainly written
on their aspect as on that of any you or daughter of Adam. These are the
houses which the fairies used to haunt, and if there is any truth in
ghost-stories, the houses which ghosts will yet haunt; and hence perhaps
the sense of soothing comfort which pervades us when we cross their
thresholds. You do not know, the moment you have cast a glance about the
hall, where the dining-room, drawing-room, and best bedroom are. You have
got it all to find out, just as the character of a man; and thus had I to
find out this house of my friend Shepherd.
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