... Yes, it was different from Bladesover.
"Bit stuffy, George," said my uncle. "They hadn't much idea of
ventilation when this was built."
One of the panelled rooms was half-filled with presses and a four-poster
bed. "Might be the ghost room," said my uncle; but it did not seem to
me that so retiring a family as the Durgans, so old and completely
exhausted a family as the Durgans, was likely to haunt anybody. What
living thing now had any concern with their honour and judgments and
good and evil deeds? Ghosts and witchcraft were a later innovation--that
fashion came from Scotland with the Stuarts.
Afterwards, prying for epitaphs, we found a marble crusader with a
broken nose, under a battered canopy of fretted stone, outside the
restricted limits of the present Duffield church, and half buried in
nettles. "Ichabod," said my uncle. "Eh? We shall be like that, Susan,
some day.... I'm going to clean him up a bit and put a railing to keep
off the children."
"Old saved at the eleventh hour," said my aunt, quoting one of the less
successful advertisements of Tono-Bungay.
Pages:
410
411
412
413
414
415
416
417
418
419
420
421
422
423
424
425
426
427
428
429
430
431
432
433
434