Page:Fletcher - The Mortover Grange Affair.pdf/301

 slowly-ticking grandfather clock, bearing on its face the date 1720; at the various nooks and corners; at the old glass, china, pewter ranged in rows in the presses—it had an atmosphere of its own, that place, he thought, and he wouldn't have been surprised if he had suddenly seen it filled with the ghosts of long dead Mortovers. Many and many a Mortover must have sat in the very chair in which he sat now, stretching legs and feet to just such a blaze as that now roaring up the wide chimney; many a Mortover woman of bygone generations had doubtless kept vigil in that kitchen as the Patello girl had kept vigil the previous night. An eerie, creepy place

Wedgwood got up from his chair after a while, and pipe in mouth and hands in pockets began to examine the queer old objects by which he was surrounded. It was plain that the place was used, and had long been used, as a family living-room as well as a kitchen and there were all sorts of things in it that are not usually found in kitchens—an ancient spinet, framed pictures and samplers on the walls, a fine old bureau, a corner cupboard filled with tarnished silver, and, in a recess let deep into the wall, a pile of old, leather-bound books, folios, quartos, octavos the very sight of which was enough to make a bibliophile's mouth