The chair
on which he sat was elbowed, and made easy with cushions and pillows,
but that on which his lame foot rested was stiff and angular. The
cushion was exquisitely worked in chain-stich, as were the quilt and
curtains of the great four-post bed, and the only carpeting consisted
of three or four narrow strips of wool-work. The walls were plain
plaster, white-washed, and wholly undecorated, except that the
mantelpiece was carved with the hideous caryatides of the early
Stewart days, and over it were suspended a long cavalry sabre, and
the accompanying spurs and pistols; above them the miniature of an
exquisitely lovely woman, with a white rose in her hair and a white
favour on her breast.
The window was a deep one projecting far into the narrow garden below,
for in truth the place was one of those old manor houses which their
wealthy owners were fast deserting in favour of new specimens of
classical architecture as understood by Louis XIV., and the room in
which the Major sat was one of the few kept in habitable repair. The
garden was rich with white pinks, peonies, lilies of the valley, and
early roses, and there was a flagged path down the centre, between the
front door and a wicket-gate into a long lane bordered with hawthorn
hedges, the blossoms beginning to blush with the advance of the season.
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