The inside of the house was peculiar also.  There was a very fine hall in the centre, and a really beautiful old oak staircase wound round it, being adorned with carving, and having a fine old fireplace on one of the landings.  This hall was the only good room in the house:  on the right of it were the kitchens and the kitchen offices, on its left was the dining-room, which was a thoroughfare to the drawing-room, and through that again you reached a pleasant library; John Mortimer’s own particular den or smoking room being beyond again.  All these rooms had thorough lights excepting the last, and in fine weather every one entered them, back or front, from the garden.

Up-stairs there were a great many bedrooms, and not one good one:  most of them had sloping roofs.  Then there was a long school-room, with a little staircase of its own.  You could make a good deal of noise in that room, and not be heard beyond it; but this circumstance is no particular advantage, if your father has no nerves at all, and scarcely observes whether there is a noise or not.

John and Valentine Mortimer had a cheerful dinner, and after that a riotous game at romps with the children.  It was four days since the funeral; it had now passed into the background of their thoughts, and they concerned themselves very little further with the will of old Madam Melcombe; for it must not be supposed that they knew much about her—­not half as much, in fact, as every man, woman, and child knew round about the place where her house was situated.

They knew she had had a large family of sons, and that their father and uncle had left home early in life—­had been sent away, was their thought, or would have been if the question had ever been raised so as to lead them to think about it.

They were sent to Wigfield, which was about sixty miles from their home.  Here they had an old second cousin, of whom they always spoke with great respect and affection.  He took Augustus into his bank, and not only became as fond of him as if he had been his son, but eventually left him half of what he possessed.  Daniel went into a lawyer’s office, and got on very well; but he was not at all rich, and had always let his son know, that though there was an estate in the family, it never could come to him.  John having also been told this, had not doubted that there must have been a family quarrel at some time or other; but in his own mind he never placed it very far back, but always fancied it must be connected with his uncle’s first marriage, which was a highly imprudent and very miserable one.

Whatever it had arisen from, his father had evidently taken part with his uncle; but old Augustus never mentioned the subject.  John was aware that he wrote to his mother once a year, but she never answered.  This might be, John thought, on account of her great age and her infirmities; and that very evening he began to dismiss the subject from his mind, being aided by the circumstance that he was himself the only son of a very rich and loving father, so that anything the mother might have left to her second surviving son was not a matter of the slightest importance to her grandson, or ever likely to be.