When we did so, I thought that the interior of the cottage was not much less grand, scarcely less beautiful, than what we had seen without. At that period most housekeepers held the hardly yet exploded heresy, not only that fresh air was a dangerous and unwholesome luxury, to be denied, as far as might be, to any but the strongest constitutions,[2] but that even sunshine within the doors was an inadmissible intrusion, alike untidy and superfluous. On these points this house set public opinion at defiance. It was set, of set purpose, at _wrong_ angles to the points of the compass. Every wind of heaven could sweep it, at the pleasure of the inmates, through and through, and the piazzas were so arranged that there was not a single apartment in it into which the sun could not look, through one window or another, once at least in the twenty-four hours. The floors were tiled, ingrained, oiled, matted,--everything but carpeted, except that of the state drawing-room; and there the Wilton had a covering over it, removed, as I afterwards found, only on occasions of state. The whole atmosphere seemed full of health, purity, cheerfulness, warmth, and brightness. Brilliant flowers peeped in at the windows, and were set on the tables in vases, or hung in them from the walls. And there were pictures, and there were statues, but there too was Miss Dudley, paring a peach for me, for sociability's sake,--for she could not eat one herself, so soon after her breakfast; and, as I knew the time must be running away very fast,--hard that it will always run fastest when we are the happiest!--I seized my first opportunity to say that few things would give me greater pleasure than to furnish the illustrations she had mentioned, if I could but succeed in executing them as I ought. "As to that, I will be your sponsor," returned she, gayly, "if you would like to begin them here. Your touch is very firm and true; and I will show you all our tricks of color. Here is my paint-box. Have you time to-day?"