I replied that I could do very well without it since I had brought my travelling bag. Then, after a few questions from Cousin Pelham about my mother, whom he had not seen since they were both children at Whispering Leaves, Mrs. Blanton led me into the wide hall, where I saw a picture, framed in the open back door, of clustering elms and a flagged walk which ran down into a sunken garden. A minute later, while we ascended the circular staircase, with its beautifully carved balustrade, I found my eyes turning toward that vision of spring which I had seen through the open door. “How white it looks out there in the garden,” I said. “It seems carpeted with moonlight.” She bent her head indifferently to glance over the balustrade. “That’s narcissus. It’s in full bloom now,” she answered. “The first Mrs. Blanton” (she might have been speaking of some one she had just left on the porch) “planted the whole garden in those flowers, and we have never got rid of them. The poet’s narcissus, Mr. Blanton calls it.” “There are lilacs, too,” I responded, for the cool dim hall was filled with the fragrance which seemed to me to be the secret of spring. “Oh, yes, there are a great many lilacs about the wings, but they are thickest out by the kitchen.” The upstairs hall, like the one below, was large and dim, and while we crossed it, my companion called my attention to a loosened board or two in the floor. “The rats are bad,” she observed. “I hope they won’t bother you. They make a good deal of noise at night.” And then almost immediately: “I don’t know how you’ll manage without a bathroom, but Mr. Blanton would never have water put in the house.” As she spoke, she opened a door at the front and ushered me into an immense bedroom, which was hung in a last-century fashion with faded calico. So far as I could distinguish in the dim light, there was not so much as a touch of red in the room. The furniture was all of rich old mahogany, made in too heavy a style for the taste that has been formed on Chippendale or Sheraton, and much of it looked as if it were dropping to pieces for lack of proper care. There was a high-tester bed, hung with the dingy calico; there was an elaborately carved bureau, with a greenish mirror which reflected my features in a fog; and there was a huge screen, papered in a design of castles and peacocks, which concealed an old-fashioned washstand. Yes, it was primitive. The touch about the water belonged to the dark ages; and yet the place possessed, for me at least, an inexpressible charm.