Kitty's house is the sweetest place, rather in the country, and just
made of wood with a shingle roof; but so quaint, and people look at it
with the same sort of reverence we look at Aikin's Farm, which was
built in fourteen hundred, you remember? This one was put up before the
revolution, in Colonial days, and it has a veranda in front running up
with Ionic pillars all in wood like a portico. Inside it is just an
English home--do you hear, Mamma? I said _home!_ because it is the
first we have seen. And it came as some new thing, and to be
appreciated, to find the furniture a little shabby from having been in
the same place so long; and the pictures most of them rather bad, but
really ancestors; and the drawing-room and our bedrooms lovely and
bright with flowery chintzes, fresh and shiny, no tapestry and
wonderful brocade; and the table-cloths plain, and no lace on the
sheets, nor embroideries to scratch the ear. It shows what foolish
creatures of habit we are, because in the other houses there has been
every possible thing one could want, and masterpieces of art and riches
and often beauty; but just because Kitty's house is like a home, and
has the indescribable atmosphere of gentle owners for generations, we
like it the best! It is ridiculous to be so prejudiced, isn't it?
Jim Bond says they are too poor to go to Europe more than once in three
years, and they only run over to New York to stay with Valerie now and
then, and sometimes down South or camping out in the summer, so they
spend all the time at Ringwood, and there is not a corner of the garden
or house they do not tend and love.
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