I liked the house from my very first sight of it.  It stood behind a row of poplars which were as green and flourishing as the poplars which stand in stately processions in the fields around Quebec.  It was an imposing great white house, and the lilacs were tall, and there were crowds of rose-bushes not yet out of bloom; and there were box borders, and there were great elms at the side of the house and down the road.  The hall door stood wide open, and my hostess turned to me as we went in, with one of her sweet, sudden smiles.  “Won’t we have a good time, Nelly?” said she.  And I thought we should.

So our summer’s housekeeping began in most pleasant fashion.  It was just at sunset, and Ann’s and Maggie’s presence made the house seem familiar at once.  Maggie had been unpacking for us, and there was a delicious supper ready for the hungry girls.  Later in the evening we went down to the shore, which was not very far away; the fresh sea-air was welcome after the dusty day, and it seemed so quiet and pleasant in Deephaven.

The Brandon House and the Lighthouse

I do not know that the Brandon house is really very remarkable, but I never have been in one that interested me in the same way.  Kate used to recount to select audiences at school some of her experiences with her Aunt Katharine, and it was popularly believed that she once carried down some indestructible picture-books when they were first in fashion, and the old lady basted them for her to hem round the edges at the rate of two a day.  It may have been fabulous.  It was impossible to imagine any children in the old place; everything was for grown people; even the stair-railing was too high to slide down on.  The chairs looked as if they had been put, at the furnishing of the house, in their places, and there they meant to remain.  The carpets were particularly interesting, and I remember Kate’s pointing out to me one day a great square figure in one, and telling me she used to keep house there with her dolls for lack of a better play-house, and if one of them chanced to fall outside the boundary stripe, it was immediately put to bed with a cold.  It is a house with great possibilities; it might easily be made charming.  There are four very large rooms on the lower floor, and six above, a wide hall in each story, and a fascinating garret over the whole, where were many mysterious old chests and boxes, in one of which we found Kate’s grandmother’s love-letters; and you may be sure the vista of rummages which Mr. Lancaster had laughed about was explored to its very end.  The rooms all have elaborate cornices, and the lower hall is very fine, with an archway dividing it, and panellings of all sorts, and a great door at each end, through which the lilacs in front and the old pensioner plum-trees in the garden are seen exchanging bows and gestures.  Coming from the Lancasters’ high city house, it did not seem as if we had to go up stairs at all there, for every step of the stairway is so broad and low,