The next day the party of us went over to Rose Hill accompanied by Oona, who could not refrain from seeing the "ingenuities" as well as ourselves, though she put it on the score of seeing that the boys and the twins didn't get into mischief. Rose Hill is built on the side of a little ravine, down which it looks to the plain and the distant sea. You ascend to it through a tiny wood, and you look down from the winding pathway upon a little brown trout-stream in the valley below. The house is fancifully built with balconies and green outside shutters, and stands but two stories, to the second of which you ascend by the hall-door steps. But it stretches away at the back to a considerable size. The house had long been shut up, and many a time as children we had peered in at the unshuttered windows to rooms once gay with gilding and white wood panelling, with marble mantel-pieces that had coloured wreaths let in, and shutters with looking-glass in the panels. The house seemed built for lightness and brightness, and was said indeed to have been designed for a bride. But the bride died almost before the waning of the honeymoon, and the disconsolate bridegroom shut up the place, and let it go to ruin. The little lawn in front was planted thickly with rose-trees, from which I suppose the place derived its name. Many of them had gone half-wild, and every summer these flung out the most exquisite rosy veil of blossoms, more beautiful, with the pale-green leaves, than any gardener ever fostered. For years we had gathered those roses, and waded in the grass, knee-deep, in the garden, to find the cherries and apples and pears and plums in their season, which would otherwise have gone to feed the birds. As we came up to the door we saw the changes that were taking place. The long grass was mown and lying in swathes, and a grumpy-looking old man was shearing the rose-trees, now fortunately done blooming. The house-door stood open, and the hall was full of painters' ladders and paint-pots and such things, while already the front of the house had been brilliantly whitened and the shutters re-painted. Oona's cousin came bustling out to meet us, her comfortable face wreathed in smiles. She was dressed very neatly in black, but I could imagine that her frilled white cap, and the little shawl round her shoulders, might excite the derision of the English servants. However, as Oona explained, Mary was subject to the ear-ache this good many years back, and couldn't bring herself to return to the cocked-up bit of a thing which she had worn with dignity on her dark hair in her old house-keeping days.