From out the rear one there had opened a smaller room
answering to the space occupied by the narrow hall and staircase in
front. All the interior partitions and doors dividing these three rooms
had been knocked away at some time in its history, leaving an L interior
having two windows in front and three in the rear.
Some one of its former occupants, more luxurious than the others, had
paneled the walls of this now irregular-shaped apartment with a dark
wood running half way to the low ceiling badly smoked and blackened
by time, and had built two fireplaces--an open wood fire which laughed
at me from behind my own andirons, and an old-fashioned English grate
set into the chimney with wide hobs--convenient and necessary for the
various brews and mixtures for which the colonel was famous.
Midway, equally warmed by both fires, stood the table, its centre
freshened by a great dish of celery white and crisp, with covers for
three on a snow-white cloth resplendent in old India blue, while at
each end shone a pair of silver coasters,--heirlooms from Carter
Hall,--one holding a cut-glass decanter of Madeira, the other awaiting
its customary bottle of claret.
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