Opposite was a wild boar impaling a hound with his tusk, and the
other walls were occupied by Herodias smiling at the contents of her
charger, Judith dropping the gory head into her bag, a brown St.
Sebastian writhing among the arrows; and Juno extracting the
painfully flesh and blood eyes of Argus to set them in her peacock's
tail.
"I object to eating my dinner in a butcher's shop," observed Allen.
"Yes, we must get them out of this place," said his mother.
"They are very valuable paintings," interposed Ellen. "I know they
are in the county history. They were collected by Sir Francis
Bradford, from whom the place was bought, and he was a great
connoisseur."
"Yes, they are just the horrid things great connoisseurs of the last
century liked, by way of giving themselves an appetite," said
Caroline.
"Are not fine pictures always horrid?" asked Jessie, in all
simplicity.
The drawing-rooms, a whole suite—-antechamber, saloon, music-room,
and card-room, were all swathed up in brown holland, hanging even
from the picture rods along the wall. Even in the days of the most
liberal housekeeper, Ellen had never done more than peep beneath. So
she revelled in investigations of gilding and yellow satin, ormolu
and marble, big mirrors and Sevres clocks, a three-piled carpet, and
a dazzling prismatic chandelier, though all was pervaded with such a
chill of unused dampness and odour of fustiness, that Caroline's
first impression was that it was a perilous place for one so lately
recovered.
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