The big stone-paved hall was very cool, and the sound of the stream at the back came babbling through lattices open to the light of a green world. Guy could not make up his mind whether the inside of the house smelled very dry or very damp, for there clung about it that odor peculiar to rustic age, which may be found equally in dry old barns and in damp potting-sheds. He wished he could furnish the hall worthily. At present it contained only a high-back chair, an alleged contemporary of Cromwell, which was doddering beside the hooded fireplace; a warming-pan; and an oak chest which remained a chest only so long as nobody either sat upon it or lifted the lid. There was also a grandfather-clock which had suffered an abrupt resurrection of four minutes' duration when it was recently lifted out of the furniture-van, but had now relapsed into the silence of years. Leading out of the hall was a small, empty room which had been dedicated to the possession of his friend Michael Fane; together they had planned to paper it with gold and paint the ceiling black. Michael, however, had still another year at Oxford, and the room with an obelisk of lining-paper standing upright on the bare floor was now a little desolate. On the other side of the hall was the dining-room, which Guy, by taxing his resources, had managed to furnish very successfully. It was a square room painted emerald-green above the white wainscot. Two inset cupboards were filled with glass and china: there were four Chippendale chairs and an oval Sheraton table, curtains of purple silk, some old English water-colors, and two candlesticks of Sheffield plate. Beyond the dining-room was the kitchen, the corridor to which was endowed with a swinging baize door considered by the landlord to be the finest feature of the house. The problem of equipping the kitchen had seemed insoluble until Guy heard of a sale in the neighborhood. He had bicycled over to this and bought the contents of the large kitchen at auction. The result was that the dresser encroached upon the table, that the table had one leg in the fender, and that a row of graduated dish-covers, the largest of which would have sheltered two turkeys, occupied whatever space was left. All that remained of Guy's own money had been invested in his kitchen, and he accounted for the large size of everything by the fact of the auction's having been held in the open air, where everything had looked so much smaller. Now, as he contemplated dubiously the result, he wondered what Miss Peasey would say to it. She and the books would arrive together at half past nine to-night. He hoped his unknown housekeeper would not be irritated by these dish-covers, and as a precautionary measure he unhooked the largest, carried it up-stairs, and deposited it on the floor of an unfurnished bedroom. The staircase ran steep and straight up from the hall into a long corridor with more casements opening on the orchard behind.