CHAPTER IV
GRANTLY
Since our girls were to become quite intimate with the peculiar old sisters and their home, perhaps it would be just as well for me to give my readers some idea of what Grantly was like.
The first thing that struck a visitor was the wonderful box bushes in the hedge enclosing the yard and in a labyrinth in the garden. These bushes were so thick that one could really walk on the tops of them if they were kept clipped, which they were not. In the labyrinth the bushes met overhead and even after a heavy rain the paths between were perfectly dry. It took days of soaking rain to make those winding paths wet. Beyond the labyrinth was an old-fashioned garden, but now in October chrysanthemums and late roses and cosmos were all that was left of the riot of color that could be seen there during the spring and summer.
The house was of a very peculiar architectural design: a long, low body with a tower at each end. In each tower was a square room with many windows overlooking the country for miles around. Miss Ella claimed one of these rooms as her own especial property; Miss Louise the other. To approach Miss Ella’s sanctum sanctorum it was necessary to climb a narrow spiral stairway; Miss Louise’s was more accessible by reason of a broad stairway of many landings, but the ceilings at the landings were so low that anyone of ordinary stature must stoop to ascend.
These rooms were used only as sitting-rooms by the erratic sisters as, strange to say, the two old ladies slept in the same room and in the same great four-posted tester bed. There were many other bedrooms in the mansion, but they both preferred the great chamber leading from the parlor, and there they slept and no doubt quarreled in their sleep.
“This is my sitting-room up here,” said Miss Ella as she showed her guests over the quaint old house. “You may come up if you like. I had the steps made this way so Louise can’t get up here and worry my soul out of me with her eternal chatter. She’s too fat for the spiral stairway. Elephant!”
“Yes, and my sitting-room is in the other tower, and thank goodness, Ella would find it a back-breaking job to get up my steps,” retaliated Miss Louise. “Giraffe!”