One
house touched me inexpressibly. It was a house I knew from the
outside in a little town where I used to go and spend a few weeks
every year with an old aunt of mine. The name of the little town--I
saw it in an agent's list--had a sort of enchantment for me, a
golden haze of memory. I was allowed a freedom there I was allowed
nowhere else, I was petted and made much of, and I used to spend
most of my time in sauntering about, just looking, watching,
scrutinising things, with the hard and uncritical observation of
childhood. When I got to the place, I was surprised to find that I
knew well the look of the house I went to see, though I had not
ever entered it. Two neat, contented, slightly absurd old maiden
ladies had lived there, who used to walk out together, dressed
exactly alike in some faded fashion. The laurels and yews still
grew thickly in the shrubbery, and shaded the windows of the ugly
little parlours. An old, quiet, respectable maid showed me round;
she had been in service there for twenty years, and she was
tearfully lamenting over the break-up of the home. The old ladies
had lived there for sixty years. One of them had died ten years
before, the other had lingered on to extreme old age.
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