Approaching the place you saw a line of scattered³ oaks and Scots firs, with straggling thorns and hollies⁴ between them along the line of a chestnut⁵ fence that had turned green with mould. Beyond the hollies and thorns rose the branches of an orchard², and beyond the orchard a plantation⁶ of yews⁷, hollies, and black spruces. The house or cottage was hardly distinguishable till you turned down into the lane from the high road. It betrayed itself merely by the corner of a white window frame, the top of a red-brick chimney, and a patch of lichened⁸ tiling visible through the tangle⁹ of foliage¹⁰.

 

The Carfaxes had been here a year, the mother having been ordered country air and a dry soil. They had sublet¹¹ the orchard to a farmer who grazed sheep there, but had kept the vegetable garden with its old black loam¹², and the plot in front with its two squares of grass, filling nearly all the space between the house and the white palings. The grass was rather coarse and long, the Carfaxes paying a man to scythe¹³ it two or three times during the summer. There were flower-beds under the fence, and on every side of the two pieces of grass, and standard roses flanking the

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