“Millie,” said Mr. Jocelyn, “I fear the place to which I shall at first take you may shock you a little.  It’s an old Revolutionary mansion, gray and rather dilapidated, but it reminded me of some of our residences in the South; and, although perhaps no better—­perhaps not so good—­it is still quite unlike the stereotyped tenement-house abomination prevailing in this city.  This ancient abode of colonial wealth took my fancy.  It suggested our own changed fortunes by its fall to its present uses.  And yet the carving around and above the doors and windows, much of which still remains, and the lofty ceilings all remind one of past better days that can never return to the poor house, but which we must bring back as soon as possible.  I shall never be content or happy, Millie, until I have placed my dear ones in the sphere to which they really belong; but for the present I do not see how we can pay rent for anything much better than rooms in the old mansion.  As far as I can learn, the people who live in it are poor, but quiet and respectable.”

Her father’s opium-tinged description caught Mildred’s fancy also, but when she saw the building her heart sank at the prospect.  To her a tenement-house was as yet a vague, untested reality, and the one before her was indeed old and dilapidated, gray and haggard with more than a century’s age.

The mansion having been built to face the river, its front was not upon the street, but toward the west.  Around its base the mortar was crumbling away, revealing its mingled brick and stone foundation.  The hip-roof of weather-beaten shingles still remained, and was surmounted by a wide-railed and wooden platform used by the occupants of the dwelling for the drying of clothes, etc.

“It makes me think of an old, dying, moss-draped white oak standing in the midst of trees of younger and different growth,” said Mr. Jocelyn, as he and Mildred scanned the gable-end of the house.

Then they entered by two or three stone steps a narrow passage, ascended a forlorn wooden stairway, covered overhead by a few boards nailed lengthwise, and so reached a small landing, where once had been a stately porch or wide veranda, looking no doubt over a broad sweep of lawn and the shining river.  The high-arched doorway was still intact, with elaborately carved but now defaced woodwork, which, rising from the sill on either side, was continued in various old-fashioned designs until it culminated over a large square window in the second story.  Generations had watched the sunsets from that window, but now high brick walls threw it in shadow much of the day.

A quaint brass knocker which gentlemen—­long since dust—­had approached wearing laced three-cornered hats, velvet short-clothes, and silver buckles, and upon which they had rapped announcement of their social claims, still hung on the rest from which they had lifted it.  It was not often used at present, for people entered without knocking, and the wide hall within was in a sense but a continuation of the street; also the winding stairway, with its ancient rail, which started out on one side and wound up to another square hallway.  To each of these open spaces the several families had equal rights.