The Water-Babies | Page 5

stone
gate-posts, and on the top of each a most dreadful bogy, all teeth, horns,
and tail, which was the crest which Sir John's ancestors wore in the
Wars of the Roses; and very prudent men they were to wear it, for all
their enemies must have run for their lives at the very first sight of
them.
Grimes rang at the gate, and out came a keeper on the spot, and opened.
"I was told to expect thee," he said. "Now thou'lt be so good as to keep
to the main avenue, and not let me find a hare or a rabbit on thee when
thou comest back. I shall look sharp for one, I tell thee."
"Not if it's in the bottom of the soot-bag," quoth Grimes, and at that he
laughed; and the keeper laughed and said:
"If that's thy sort, I may as well walk up with thee to the hall."
"I think thou best had. It's thy business to see after thy game, man, and
not mine."
So the keeper went with them; and, to Tom's surprise, he and Grimes
chatted together all the way quite pleasantly. He did not know that a
keeper is only a poacher turned outside in, and a poacher a keeper
turned inside out.
They walked up a great lime avenue, a full mile long, and between their

stems Tom peeped trembling at the horns of the sleeping deer, which
stood up among the ferns. Tom had never seen such enormous trees,
and as he looked up he fancied that the blue sky rested on their heads.
But he was puzzled very much by a strange murmuring noise, which
followed them all the way. So much puzzled, that at last he took
courage to ask the keeper what it was.
He spoke very civilly, and called him Sir, for he was horribly afraid of
him, which pleased the keeper, and he told him that they were the bees
about the lime flowers.
"What are bees?" asked Tom.
"What make honey."
"What is honey?" asked Tom.
"Thou hold thy noise," said Grimes.
"Let the boy be," said the keeper. "He's a civil young chap now, and
that's more than he'll be long if he bides with thee."
Grimes laughed, for he took that for a compliment.
"I wish I were a keeper," said Tom, "to live in such a beautiful place,
and wear green velveteens, and have a real dog-whistle at my button,
like you."
The keeper laughed; he was a kind-hearted fellow enough.
"Let well alone, lad, and ill too at times. Thy life's safer than mine at all
events, eh, Mr. Grimes?"
And Grimes laughed again, and then the two men began talking, quite
low. Tom could hear, though, that it was about some poaching fight;
and at last Grimes said surlily, "Hast thou anything against me?"
"Not now."

"Then don't ask me any questions till thou hast, for I am a man of
honour."
And at that they both laughed again, and thought it a very good joke.
And by this time they were come up to the great iron gates in front of
the house; and Tom stared through them at the rhododendrons and
azaleas, which were all in flower; and then at the house itself, and
wondered how many chimneys there were in it, and how long ago it
was built, and what was the man's name that built it, and whether he got
much money for his job?
These last were very difficult questions to answer. For Harthover had
been built at ninety different times, and in nineteen different styles, and
looked as if somebody had built a whole street of houses of every
imaginable shape, and then stirred them together with a spoon.
For the attics were Anglo-Saxon. The third door Norman. The second
Cinque-cento. The first-floor Elizabethan. The right wing Pure Doric.
The centre Early English, with a huge portico copied from the
Parthenon. The left wing pure Boeotian, which the country folk
admired most of all, became it was just like the new barracks in the
town, only three times as big. The grand staircase was copied from the
Catacombs at Rome. The back staircase from the Tajmahal at Agra.
This was built by Sir John's great-great-great-uncle, who won, in Lord
Clive's Indian Wars, plenty of money, plenty of wounds, and no more
taste than his betters. The cellars were copied from the caves of
Elephanta. The offices from the Pavilion at Brighton.
And the rest from nothing in heaven, or earth, or under the earth.
So that Harthover House was a great puzzle to antiquarians, and a
thorough Naboth's vineyard to critics, and architects, and all persons
who like meddling with other men's business, and spending other men's
money. So they were all