Now Peter had never been a good landlord; from his youth up his pursuits and interests had not been such as to make him take pleasure in agriculture. Accounts and calculations were not at all in his way either, and accordingly, no one was more imposed upon and plundered by his stewards than himself. He was generous in everything, open-handed, a true gentleman, delighted to help or oblige anyone, and much more thoughtlessly profuse than many who were far richer than himself. The dwelling-house on that one of his estates to which he had decided to go, was, it is hardly needful to say, very much out of repair, almost a ruin in fact. It had never been handsome, being, in truth, but a great shapeless barn, or store-house, which consisted merely of a ground floor nearly as broad as it was long. The original building had been of stone, built in the shape of a tent, and, of course, open to the roof; for ceilings, except in churches, were long looked upon as luxuries. The first inhabitants had slept and cooked, lived and died, all in this one great hall, or barn; and their successors, as they found more space needed, had made many additions, each with its own separate roof of split fir-poles, straw, or reeds. By degrees the original building had been surrounded by a whole colony of such roofs, with broad wooden troughs between them to carry off the rain water. Most of these additions had open roofs, and were as much like barns as the first; but some were covered in with great shapeless beams; and in a few there were even fireplaces, built up of logs thickly coated with plaster. Various alterations and improvements had been made before Master Peter's arrival, the most important of which was that the openings in the walls which had hitherto done duty as windows, had been filled in with bladder-skin, and provided with wooden lattices. The floors were not boarded, but the earth had been carefully levelled, and was concealed by coarse reed-mats, while the walls had been plastered and whitened. Altogether, the place was not uncomfortable, according to the ideas of the time, and Dora was not at all disgusted with its appearance, even coming from her uncle's house, where she was accustomed to a good deal of splendour of a certain kind. Hungarians, even in those days, could make a splendid appearance upon occasion, as they did at the King's wedding, when all the guests wore scarlet, richly embroidered with gold. But their chief luxuries at home took the form of such articles as could be easily converted into money in case of need.