But Angela's discovery was a great arched doorway, mantled only by a curtain, and leading into the only really ancient part of the building (except one turret). It was a very long room, with dark oak floor, six arched and cusped windows looking into as many arches of the cloister that ran along it, and black wainscot panelled walls, and oak beams, painted with coats-of-arms. So long was it, that the billiard table at one end, and at the other Clement's table laid out for the ringers' supper, made little show in it; and Angela, pouncing on Will Harewood, waltzed wildly with him up and down the shining floor, while Bernard learnedly expounded to Stella the games at billiards he had enjoyed with Mr. Somers there, and Lance went straight to the organ at the farther end.
'Ah! if you can do any good with that!' said Clement. 'I have been trying, but have only driven it and myself distracted!'
'How well I know the place!' cried Wilmet. 'Oh, if Alda could see it! I remember your driving us all in a team here, Fee!—Yes, Kit, trot, trot, all along. It is as if I saw you, Cherry, taking your first run alone there.'
'Better than now, I fear,' said Felix. 'Why, Cherry, woman, we must lay down bridges of matting for you,' as he felt her clutch his arm.
'Are all the floors so dreadful?' she sighed, as Clement next opened from the hall door into the library, with only a bit of carpet as an island in the middle. The library ranged with the drawing and dining rooms, though older. It had a window and a door into the cloister, and two windows to the east, and was surrounded with caged book-shelves. Here stood an harmonium, and the table and deep window-seats were piled with the miscellaneous parish appurtenances of the nineteenth-century pastor.
'You had better have this room, Felix,' said Clement; 'there was so much to do that I could not get my traps moved after Somers went.'
To which Felix replied by insisting that Clement should retain it. The door into the cloister, communicating with the church and churchyard, made it particularly eligible for the Vicar; and the study, on the opposite side of the hall, the Squire's favourite sitting-room, with the two south windows, would suit him and Pur,—the better that the adjoining room, where old Fulbert had slept in his infirm days, would serve as a housekeeper's room for Sibby and a retreat and home for Theodore. It opened into a passage leading to the offices.
'Never mind them now,' said Clement. 'Let Martha recover before we face her. I don't know which she resents most, the supper, or my sending in Kerenhappuch to help her. You all will be glad to find your nests, ladies,' he added, as poor Cherry surmounted each slippery shallow step, clinging hard to Felix's arm, while Angela and Stella had flown all round the upper story, and were helping Bill to laugh at the round-eyed range of ancestors in the corridor.
'Here I put you, our grand company, Mettie,' said Clement, opening the door of the handsome bedroom of the drawing-room wing; 'the nursery is up over, as I daresay you remember.'
'As if I did not!'