Abercorran House was honoured by four martins’ nests under the eaves, placed at such regular intervals that they appeared to be corbels for supporting the roof. Not one of the other houses in the street had a martin’s nest. But the distinguishing feature of the Morgans’ house was that you could see at a glance that it was the Morgans’. The front garden was merely a way round to the yard and the Wilderness. Altogether the front of the house, facing east, must have looked to a stranger uninhabited. Everything was done on the other side, or in the yard. Bounded on the east by the house, on the north or Brockenhurst side by a high wall (built by Mr Brockenhurst, as we called him), and on the west or lane side by a split oak fence, but separated from the Wilderness and the south only by the conservatory and the pigeon-house and some low railings, the yard of Abercorran House was a reservoir of sun. The high south wall was occupied, not by fruit trees, but by cascades of ivy and by men and boys standing or sitting in the sun, talking, watching the jackdaws coming and going in the elms of the Wilderness, and also by dogs gnawing bones or sleeping. There was no cultivated garden, but several of the corners had always some blossoms of wall-flower, sweet-rocket, or snapdragon, that looked after themselves: in the pocket between the fence and the pigeon house half a dozen sunflowers invariably found a way of growing eight feet high and expanding enormous blossoms, every one of them fit to be copied and stuck up for a sign outside the “Sun” inn. Nobody could mistake Abercorran House; but in case anybody did, Mr Morgan had a brass plate with “T. Ll. Morgan” on it at the foot of his front steps, in a position where to see it from the road was impossible. This plate was always bright: the only time when I saw it dim was when Ann was alone in the deserted house. A succession of active, dirty, little maids employed in the house agreed upon this one point, that the name-plate must be polished until it reflected their cheeks as they reflected its never-understood glory. No vainglorious initial letters followed the name, nor any descriptive word. The maids--Lizz, Kate, Ellen, Polly, Hannah, Victoria, and the rest--probably knew no more than I ever did why the name was there. For it was perfectly clear that Mr Morgan never did or wished to do anything. The name might just as well have been that of some famous man born there a hundred years before: in any case it had nothing to do with that expression the house had of frankness, mystery, untidiness, ease, and something like rusticity. In the yard behind, the bull terrier stood for frankness, the greyhound for rusticity, the cats for mystery, and most things for untidiness, and all for ease.