Very handsome houses are on this street, with beautiful gardens. The walls are not so high there, and we wondered if the owners were as aristocratic as those enclosed by high walls.
"Maybe every generation puts another layer of brick on the wall," suggested Dee, and I made a mental reservation that that, too, would go in my notebook about Charleston.
CHAPTER VII
THE ABANDONED HOTEL
As we followed this street, East Bay Street it is called, we came upon a great old custard-colored house built right on the water's edge so that the waves almost lapped its long pleasant galleries.
"Isn't this a jolly place?" we cried, but when we got closer to it we decided jolly was certainly not the name for it.
The window panes of its many windows were missing or broken. The doors were open and swinging in the strong breeze that seemed to develop almost into a hurricane as it hit the exposed corner of the old custard-colored house. A tattered awning was flapping continuously from one end of the porch, an awning that had been gaily striped once, but now was faded to a dull gray except one spot where it had wrapped itself around one of the columns and in so doing, had protected a portion of itself from the weather to bear witness to its former glory.
"What a dismal place! What could it have been?"