Foremost amongst these was the kitchen. Oh! such a kitchen it was. Flanked by the store-room and larders, and a dairy a little further on, which opened out into a spacious back yard, and with the baking and brewing-houses, and the wood and the wash sheds, it formed a regular little quadrangle.
Over the kitchen was a long, low room, filled with linen-presses, and fragrant with lavender and dried rose-leaves, for Mrs. Busson held fast to old traditions in these matters of household economy; whilst almost adjoining was a huge apple-room, and overhead the vast cheese-loft.
Between the linen room and the apple store was another chamber door (if that door had never been there, this story would never have been written). To judge, however, from the cobwebs which hung like a thick grey mist about its cracks and hinges, that door must have been long, very long unopened.
“Now mind, you girls,” Mrs. Busson had cautioned her hand-maidens, before the children’s arrival, “whatever happens, you never let the little gentlemen and ladies go trying to get in there.”
Unanimously, the girls promised obedience.
But that same evening, directly after tea, their mistress reiterated her commands.
“Whatever you do, don’t drop a hint to Master Andrew of what’s in that room,” she said, “for I’ll be bound he’d be up to some mischief, and so, I suspect, would Miss Phoena too, if they only guessed.”
“Very good, ma’am,” said the trusty Nell (she was cheese-room maid), “chances are, if we manage well, they’ll never so much as notice the door. Young things are mostly for getting out of doors.”
And at starting, it seemed as if Nell was likely to prove a true prophet.
All through the next morning, in spite of the oppressive midsummer heat, the children were flitting about in all directions.