So my Cousin Milly took me under the arm, and pulled me forward; but as we ascended, she let me go, leaning back to make inspection of my attire from a new point of view.

‘Hallo, cousin,’ she cried, giving my dress a smack with her open hand.  ’What a plague do you want of all that bustle; you’ll leave it behind, lass, the first bush you jump over.’

I was a good deal astounded.  I was also very near laughing, for there was a sort of importance in her plump countenance, and an indescribable grotesqueness in the fashion of her garments, which heightened the outlandishness of her talk, in a way which I cannot at all describe.

What palatial wide stairs those were which we ascended, with their prodigious carved banisters of oak, and each huge pillar on the landing-place crowned with a shield and carved heraldic supporters; florid oak panelling covered the walls.  But of the house I could form no estimate, for Uncle Silas’s housekeeping did not provide light for hall and passages, and we were dependent on the glimmer of a single candle; but there would be quite enough of this kind of exploration in the daylight.

So along dark oak flooring we advanced to my room, and I had now an opportunity of admiring, at my leisure, the lordly proportions of the building.  Two great windows, with dark and tarnished curtains, rose half as high again as the windows of Knowl; and yet Knowl, in its own style, is a fine house.  The door-frames, like the window-frames, were richly carved; the fireplace was in the same massive style, and the mantelpiece projected with a mass of very rich carving.  On the whole I was surprised.  I had never slept in so noble a room before.

The furniture, I must confess, was by no means on a par with the architectural pretensions of the apartment.  A French bed, a piece of carpet about three yards square, a small table, two chairs, a toilet table—­no wardrobe—­no chest of drawers.  The furniture painted white, and of the light and diminutive kind, was particularly ill adapted to the scale and style of the apartment, one end only of which it occupied, and that but sparsely, leaving the rest of the chamber in the nakedness of a stately desolation.  My cousin Milly ran away to report progress to ‘the Governor,’ as she termed Uncle Silas.

‘Well, Miss Maud, I never did expect to see the like o’ that!’ exclaimed honest Mary Quince, ’Did you ever see such a young lady?  She’s no more like one o’ the family than I am.  Law bless us! and what’s she dressed like?  Well, well, well!’ And Mary, with a rueful shake of her head, clicked her tongue pathetically to the back of her teeth, while I could not forbear laughing.

‘And such a scrap o’ furniture!  Well, well, well!’ and the same ticking of the tongue followed.

But, in a few minutes, back came Cousin Milly, and, with a barbarous sort of curiosity, assisted in unpacking my trunks, and stowing away the treasures, on which she ventured a variety of admiring criticisms, in the presses which, like cupboards, filled recesses in the walls, with great oak doors, the keys of which were in them.