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.
[Illustration: “_Shining tables with slender brass-tipped legs._”]
[Illustration: “_There the guns were kept._”]
[Illustration: “_Bookcases filled with brown-backed, much-read books._”]
The furniture was old-timey and plain,--mahogany and rosewood bedsteads and dressers black with age, and polished till they shone like mirrors, hung with draperies white as snow; straight-backed chairs generations old interspersed with common new ones; long sofas with claw feet; old shining tables with slender brass-tipped legs, straight or fluted, holding some fine old books, and in springtime a blue or flowered bowl or two with glorious roses; bookcases filled with brown-backed, much-read books. This was all.
The servants’ houses, smoke-house, wash-house, and carpenter-shop were set around the “back yard,” with “mammy’s house” a little nicer than the others; and farther off, upon and beyond the quarters hill, “the quarters,”--whitewashed, substantial buildings, each for a family, with chicken-houses hard by, and with yards closed in by split palings, filled with fruit trees, which somehow bore cherries, peaches, and apples in a mysterious profusion even when the orchard failed.
Beyond the yard were gardens. There were two,--the vegetable garden and the flower garden. The former was the test of the mistress’s power; for at the most critical times she took the best hands on the place to work it. The latter was the proof of her taste. It was a strange affair: pyrocanthus hedged it on the outside; honeysuckle ran riot over its palings, perfuming the air; yellow cowslips in well-regulated tufts edged some borders, while sweet peas, pinks, and violets spread out recklessly over others; jonquilles yellow as gold, and, once planted, blooming every spring as certainly as the trees budded or the birds nested, grew in thick bunches; and here and there were tall lilies, white as angels’ wings and stately as the maidens that walked among them; big snowball bushes blooming with snow, lilacs purple and white and sweet in the spring, and always with birds’ nests in them with the bluest of eggs; and in places rosebushes, and tall hollyhock stems filled with rich rosettes of every hue and shade, made a delicious tangle. In the autumn rich dahlias and pungent-odored chrysanthemums ended the sweet procession and closed the season.