But if you are expected you will hardly have time to look round, for Brantwood is nothing if not hospitable.  The honoured guest—­and all guests are honoured there—­after welcome, is ushered up a narrow stair, which betrays the original cottage, into the “turret room.”  It had been “the Professor’s” until after his illness, and he papered it with naturalistic pansies, to his own taste, and built out at one corner a projecting turret to command the view on all sides, with windows strongly latticed to resist the storms.  There is old-fashioned solid comfort in the way of furniture; and pictures,—­a Duerer engraving, some Prouts and Turners, a couple of old Venetian heads, and Meissonier’s “Napoleon,” over the fireplace—­a picture which Ruskin bought for one thousand guineas, showed for a time at Oxford, and hung up here in a shabby little frame to be out of the way.[42]

[Footnote 42:  Sold in 1882 for 5,900 guineas.]

If you are a man, you are told not to dress; if you are a lady, you may put on your prettiest gown.  They dine in the new room, for the old dining-room was so small that the waitress could not get round the table.  The new room is spacious and lofty compared with the rest of the house; it has a long window with thick red sandstone mullions—­there at last is a touch of Gothicism—­to look down the lake, and a bay window open on the narrow lawn sloping steeply down to the road in front, and the view of the Old Man.  The walls, painted “duck egg,” are hung with old pictures; the Doge Gritti, a bit saved from the great Titian that was burnt in the fire at the Ducal Palace in 1574; a couple of Tintorets; Turner and Reynolds, each painted by himself in youth; Raphael by a pupil, so it is said; portraits of old Mr. and Mrs. Ruskin, and little John and his “boo hills.”  There he sits, no longer little, opposite:  and you can trace the same curve and droop of the eyebrows prefigured in the young face and preserved in the old, and a certain family likeness to his handsome young father.

Since Mr. Ruskin’s illness his cousin, Mrs. Arthur Severn, has become more and more indispensable to him:  she sits at the head of the table and calls him “the coz.”  An eminent visitor was once put greatly out of countenance by this apparent irreverence.  After obvious embarrassment, light dawned upon him towards the close of the meal.  “Oh!” said he, “it’s ‘the coz’ you call Mr. Ruskin.  I thought you were saying’ the cuss!’”

There are generally two or three young people staying in the house, salaried assistants[43] or amateur, occasional helpers; but though there is a succession of visitors from a distance, there is not very frequent entertainment of neighbours.