It was pale and gray and plain and cool and utterly aloof. It did not care a toss whether you looked at it or not, so of course you always did, leaning over the humped bridge, and wondering what ghosts moved in the darkened rooms and met by moonlight on the terrace. If you tried to bring a car up its twisting, cross-grained drive, the odds were you would find yourself in the river or a clump of clipped yews as old as Ernuin the Priest. And the roses at Watters would have died of sheer disgust in the cosmopolitan atmosphere of a rose-show marquee. They grew and scrambled and climbed in their own strong-willed fashion, clothing cold stone with hearts of deep orange, flinging arches of tender pink or glowing crimson against opal skies, or lifting single, dewy heads like pale lamps in the hushed garden after sunset. And at any but simple food it looked rigidly askance, loftily permitting the butcher to drop his beef and mutton, and condescending to game, as a country house of standing, but shutting shocked eyelids upon French ménus and foreign cheeses. Anything _bisqué_ or _braisé_ or _soufflé_ or _au gratin_ scarcely dared trust itself near the stove, and a pot of _foie-gras_ had positively to be smuggled. It was a curious impulse that had driven the Lancashire tradesman from the home of his own creating to one with which he had apparently nothing in common. Less than a year ago, Dandy had found him on the Halsted drive, with his hands in his pockets and his hat on the back of his head, surveying the symbol of wealth with a puzzled frown. “There’s something wrong, Dandy Anne!” he broke out, as she slid a hand through his arm. “It’s strong and it’s good, and it’s warm and it’s cool, and comfortable and convenient and clean, but it isn’t anything else. It doesn’t make you think of the past and the future. It doesn’t make you want to throw up your hat one minute and dry your eyes on your coat-sleeve the next. It’ll never have any troubles or joys bigger than an insurance-card or a mayoral invitation. It’s smug--that’s what it is! It doesn’t feel--it _can’t_, and so it can’t make you feel, either. When a man’s getting on in years, he wants the sort of house that can show him how to grow old kindly. This red elephant would be smug and smiling while I was tottering into the grave. Let’s go and find a hut, Dandy Anne, where I can grow old gently.”