Back of the house, toward the right, was a huge barn and a granary; the eaves of both under-hung with a solid row of swallows' nests. On this bright April morning, the whole air was full of the twirl and twitter of these birds, and with the blue glancing of their wings some invisible crystalline ring seemed to have been let down from the heavens over and around the house, and they followed its outline in their flight. But the homely, bread-and-butter robins had no such mystical ways. They flew or hopped straight where they wanted to go, and what they wanted to get was plainly something to eat. One of them alighted on the threshold of the open front-door and looked curiously in. He saw a long hall, with a staircase on one side, and open doors to right and left and at the furthest end. All the wood-work, walls, and ceilings in sight were dingy, and rats and mice had assisted time in gnawing away; but the furniture was bright, and three fires visible through the three open doors were brighter still. Redbreast seemed to be much interested in these fires. Probably he was a bird from the city, and had never seen such large ones. Those in the front rooms were large enough, but that in the kitchen was something immense, and yet left room at one side of the fireplace for a person to sit and look up chimney, if so disposed. "_Bon!_" says the bird, with a nod, hopping in, "the kitchen is the place to go to. As to those flowers and cherries on the floor, I am not to be cheated by them. They are not good to eat, but only to walk on. I am a bird of culture and society. I know how people live. I am not like that stupid chicken." For a little yellow chicken, without a sign of tail, had followed the robin in, and was eagerly pecking at the spots in the carpet. The bird of culture hopped along to the door at the back of the hail, and paused again to reconnoitre. Here a long, narrow corridor ran across, with doors opening into the front rooms, and one into the kitchen, and a second stairway at one end. Three more hops brought the bird to the threshold of the kitchen-door, where a third pause occurred, this one not without trepidation; for here in the great kitchen a woman stood at a table with a pan of potatoes before her. She had washed them, and was now engaged in partially paring them and cutting out any suspicious spots that might be visible on the surfaces. "It takes me to make new potatoes out of old ones!" she said to herself with an air of satisfaction, tossing the potato in in her hand into a pan of cold water.