The Plantation House.
There was an “office” in the yard; another house where the boys used to stay, and the right to sleep in which was as eagerly looked forward to and as highly prized as was by the youth of Rome the wearing of the toga virilis. [There the guns were kept]; there the dogs might sleep with their masters, under, or in cold weather even on, the beds; and there charming bits of masculine gossip were retailed by the older young gentlemen, and delicious tales of early wickedness related, all the more delightful because they were veiled in chaste language phrased not merely to meet the doctrine, maxima reverentia pueris debetur, but to meet the higher truth that no gentleman would use foul language.
Off to one side was the orchard, in springtime a bower of pink and snow, and always making a pleasant spot in the landscape; beyond which peeped the ample barns and stables, and farther yet lay the wide green fields.
Some of the fields that stretched around were poor, and in places where the rains had washed off the soil, red “galls” showed through; but the tillage was careful and systematic, and around the house were rich hay-fields where the cattle stood knee-deep in clover. The brown worm fences ran in lateral lines, and the ditches were kept clean except for useful willows.
