Page:Stewart Edward White--The Rose Dawn.djvu/188

176 est. They moved in about the first of December. Everything smelled new. It was an imposing house, two-storied, square like a box, but with its plainness relieved by a cupola. One mounted a tiny porch with pillars and passed into a narrow central hall in which arose the stairs and from which opened four doors on each side and one at the end. The two doors on the right led into the library and the dining room. The two doors on the left into the parlour and a smaller affair known as the "den"; the one at the end gave access to the kitchen by way of the pantry. All the woodwork shone with varnish. The walls were kalsomined and decorated with stencilled or "hand painted" designs. The furniture of the parlour was the last degree of spindle legged and brocaded discomfort; that of the dining room carved and massive; but the library and den, with their fireplaces and their leather upholstered chairs and sofas were, even when new, cosy and inviting. Boyd had expended considerable ingenuity on the den. It had a cellarette with spaces for all shaped bottles and glasses; a humidor like a cabinet; a card table with devices for bestowing ashes, chips, or drinks. Altogether the house was a very creditable setting for a gentleman of wealth and leisure of the early 'eighties; a woman might criticize it as too distinctly a man's house, of expensive solid comfort, but more like a furniture exhibit than an example of considered taste.

The grounds, too, were well advanced in the first stages. That is to say, they were all planted, but not yet grown. The modern practise of wealthy gentlemen of moving full grown trees at fabulous cost and great risk was then unknown. You planted things out of earthenware pots, or at most wooden tubs. An Easterner would have seen little in Boyd's new garden save a pattern and a lot of plants, all apparently alike. Not so a Californian. The latter has developed the seeing eye. Those fifty growths or so he does not see as they are, all the same size. Some to him stand as trees, some as shrubs, some as creepers or flowering plants. He sees that garden as it will be, not as it is; and so he is prepared for interested and intelligent discussion. Thus Mrs. Stanley and Boyd had an almost acrimonious argument as to whether a certain tree should be removed, the ground