If you are a man, you are told not to dress; if you are a lady, you may put on your prettiest gown. They dine in the new room, for the old dining-room was so small that the waitress could not get round the table. The new room is spacious and lofty compared with the rest of the house; it has a long window with thick red sandstone mullions--there at last is a touch of Gothicism--to look down the lake, and a bay window open on the narrow lawn sloping steeply down to the road in front, and the view of the Old Man. The walls, painted "duck egg," are hung with old pictures; the Doge Gritti, a bit saved from the great Titian that was burnt in the fire at the Ducal Palace in 1574; a couple of Tintorets; Turner and Reynolds, each painted by himself in youth; Raphael by a pupil, so it is said; portraits of old Mr. and Mrs. Ruskin, and little John and his "boo hills." There he sits, no longer little, opposite: and you can trace the same curve and droop of the eyebrows prefigured in the young face and preserved in the old, and a certain family likeness to his handsome young father. Since Mr. Ruskin's illness his cousin, Mrs. Arthur Severn, has become more and more indispensable to him: she sits at the head of the table and calls him "the coz." An eminent visitor was once put greatly out of countenance by this apparent irreverence. After obvious embarrassment, light dawned upon him towards the close of the meal. "Oh!" said he, "it's 'the coz' you call Mr. Ruskin. I thought you were saying' the cuss!'" There are generally two or three young people staying in the house, salaried assistants[43] or amateur, occasional helpers; but though there is a succession of visitors from a distance, there is not very frequent entertainment of neighbours. [Footnote 43: The face most familiar at Brantwood in those times was "Laurie's." A strange, bright, gifted boy--admirable draughtsman, ingenious mechanician, marvellous actor; the imaginer of the quaintest and drollest humours that ever entered the head of man; devoted to boats and boating, but unselfishly ready to share all labours and contribute to all diversions; painstaking and perfect in his work, and brilliant in his wit,--Laurence Hilliard was dearly loved by his friends, and is still loved by them dearly. He was Ruskin's chief secretary at Brantwood from Jan., 1876 to 1882, when the death of his father, and ill-health, led him to resign the post, which was then filled by Miss Sara D. Anderson. Hilliard continued to live at Coniston, and was just beginning to succeed as a painter of still life and landscape when he died of pleurisy on board a friend's yacht in the Aegean, April 11th, 1887, aged thirty-two.]