Before the house a round of vivid green was encircled by the drive that led through high stone gates to the moorland road. A stone wall, running from gate to gate, divided the lawn from the road, and upon each pillar a curiously carved old griffin, its back and head spotted with yellow lichens, held stiffly up, for the inspection of passers-by, the family escutcheon. From the windows at the back of the house one looked up at the hilltop, bare but for a group of pine-trees, and down into a deep garden. Here, among utilitarian squares of vegetable beds, went overgrown borders of flowers--bands of larkspurs, lupins, stocks, and columbines. The golden-gray of the walls was thickly embroidered with climbing fruit-trees, and was entirely covered, at one end of the garden, by a small snow-white rose, old-fashioned, closely petaled; and here in a corner stood a thatched summer-house, where Eppie played with her dolls, and where, on warm summer days, the white roses filled the air with a fragrance heavy yet fresh in its wine-like sweetness. All Eppie’s early memories of Kirklands centered about the summer-house and were mingled with the fragrance of the roses. Old James, the gardener, put up there a little locker where her toys were stored, and shelves where she ranged her dolls’ dishes. There were rustic seats, too, and a table--a table always rather unsteady on the uneven wooden floor. The sun basked in that sheltered, windless corner, and, when it rained, the low, projecting eaves ranged one safely about with a silvery fringe of drops through which one looked out over the wet garden and up at the white walls of the house, crossed by the boughs of a great, dark pine-tree. Inside the house the chief room was the fine old library, where, from long windows, one looked south over the purples and blues of the moorland. Books filled the shelves from floor to ceiling--old-fashioned tomes in leather bindings, shut away, many of them, behind brass gratings and with all the delightful sense of peril connected with the lofty upper ranges, only to be reached by a courageous use of the library steps. Here Uncle Nigel gave Eppie lessons in Greek and history every morning, aided in the minor matters of her education by a submissive nursery governess, an Englishwoman, High Church in doctrine and plaintive in a country of dissent.