In the first place, the old man who lived
alone in it (for it had ceased to be the dwelling-house of a real farm)
was an eccentric old miser, the chief object of whose existence seemed
to be to thwart any attempt to pry into the daily details of it. What
manner of stimulus this was to boyish curiosity needs no explanation,
much as it needs excuse.
In the second place, Walnut-tree Farm was so utterly different from the
house which was our home, that everything about it was attractive from
mere unaccustomedness.
Our house had been rebuilt from the foundations by my father. It was
square-built and very ugly, but it was in such excellent repair that one
could never indulge a more lawless fancy towards any chink or cranny
about it than a desire to "point" the same with a bit of mortar.
Why it was that my ancestor, who built the old house, and who was not a
bit better educated or farther-travelled than my father, had built a
pretty one, whilst my father built an ugly one, is one of the many
things I do not know, and wish I did.
From the old sketches of it which my grandfather painted on the parlour
handscreens, I think it must have been like a larger edition of the
farm; that is, with long mullioned windows, a broad and gracefully
proportioned doorway with several shallow steps and quaintly-ornamented
lintel; bits of fine work and ornamentation about the woodwork here and
there, put in as if they had been done, not for the look of the thing,
but for the love of it, and whitewash over the house-front, and over the
apple-trees in the orchard.
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