‘We came down from the Adirondacks,’ said Rita. ‘We wanted to call on Miss Hannah and Maria, and if possible to get a sketch of the house, to paint a picture of it.’
‘You don’t say so! well I declair for it, it’s too bad!’ said the Widder Luke; ‘but there’s sights of houses older’n that one you might paint; there’s the Fife house, where they are stoppin’ now; that’s as old agin and more tumble-down, if that’s what you want. I read a piece in the “Greentown Gazette” about artists; it said they always took the worst-lookin’ houses to paint, though it does seem queer to me.’
‘Did you know the Keys house very well, and can you tell us how the rooms were built?’
‘Why, certain!’ said Mr. Briggs. ‘I’ve been in it a hundred times if I have once.’
Rita and Nan bent forward to listen; the horse jogged slowly up the hill, Mr. Briggs flicking his whip from side to side to encourage the steady walk.
‘There was a hall a-runnin’ right through the middle, from front to back—an awful waste of space to my thinkin’; when my brother Joel built his house he sot out to have just such a hall, and I said to him, sez I: “While you’re about it why don’t you build a house, or else build a hall and let it out for dancin’?” Joel was dead set agin dancin’ and it kind of stuck in his mind, so he built his’n without any hall; you jest step right out of doors into the settin’-room; it’s nice in summer, but a leetle cold in winter.’
‘Yes, I should think it might be. What were the other rooms in the Keys house?’
‘Wall, there was the family settin’-room, on the right-hand side of the hall, and back of that the bed-room for the old folks; Hannah she’s slep’ there for some years now; on the north side there was the keepin’-room, and back of that the dinin’-room, though I’ll be blessed if I know why it wasn’t a kitchen, that is, if a kitchen is where folks cook. Them Keyses, way back to Jonathan Keys, was always folks for high-flyin’ names, ’specially Hannah.’
‘Was that all the rooms there were in the lower part?’
‘Pretty much all, except a shed they used for a kitchen in old times.’