They passed through the woods with the puppies galloping round about, and then they came to the stone-built home of the Bullstones—a granite house under red tiles, which covered the upper storey of the walls also. It basked under the hot sun in a hollow notch of Black Tor, while the river ran at its feet and a grass lawn spread before the windows. Above, on the hillside, were scooped terraces where grew cabbage and turnip, and beyond sprang the trees to the hill crest westerly. Laurel and rhododendron made the slope snug; the kennels extended behind the house, while Bullstone's property spread to the other side of the river also and there an acre or two had been cleared, where potatoes grew in the rich alluvial. Fowls and ducks flourished at stream side and the link between Red House and the outlying cultivation was a bridge of pine logs thrown across Auna, where her banks rose high.
Everything about the place was neat, trim and stern. The hedges were clipt, the ground clean; for Jacob Bullstone's mother was an old-fashioned woman and had lived with a husband inspired by the same ideas.
"The highest beauty be tidiness," Mrs. Bullstone never wearied of declaring, and her son was content to echo that opinion. His home and its surroundings proclaimed the distinction of use, but none other. There were no flower beds, no attempt to decorate house, garden, or river. Indeed Auna was chastened by stone-built banks, until she passed southerly away to the rocks and rapids and the deep mossy pools, where Red House ducks and geese spent their pleasantest hours. Nature strove with man, but man conquered for a little space.
Mrs. Bullstone was at the door and repeated her son's directions, as she took the cream from him.
"Get up to your chamber and doff them clothes, Margery. I well know your mother don't hold with 'em and I hope you won't wear 'em no more."
"I'm kennel-maid a little longer, mother," replied the girl. Then she entered and Jacob conducted the puppies to their quarters. Behind the house was a large exercise yard, with open compartments wired off round about it, a boiler house for the preparation of food, and various buildings on two sides of the square. The red mothers of the puppies welcomed them back and the little things knew their parents. Separated dogs barked to Jacob from enclosures and pressed their noses through the bars; but all were of the same breed and to an untrained eye exactly resembled each other. Jacob accosted a few, then turned to a man who was mixing food.
"The goats are gone up Shipley Tor," he said. For goats were a feature of the establishment. A little flock was kept, since goats' milk in Bullstone's opinion was the primest food for new born dogs.
Barton Gill, though bald and wrinkled, was not so old as he looked. As a lad he had worked for Jacob's father and was now little more than fifty, though he appeared to be nearer seventy. He was slow of voice and gesture, but still was strong and hearty behind his wrinkles and somewhat pessimistic view of life.
"They goats be the bane of my days," he said, "and a time's coming when I shan't be able to keep pace with the toads."
Jacob laughed shortly.