GIRLS OF THE FOREST

CHAPTER I.

THE GUEST WHO WAS NEITHER OLD NOR YOUNG.


It was a beautiful summer's afternoon, and the girls were seated in a
circle on the lawn in front of the house. The house was an old
Elizabethan mansion, which had been added to from time to time--fresh
additions jutting out here and running up there. There were all sorts of
unexpected nooks and corners to be found in the old house--a flight of
stairs just where you did not look for any, and a baize door shutting
away the world at the moment when you expected to behold a long vista
into space. The house itself was most charming and inviting-looking; but
it was also, beyond doubt, much neglected. The doors were nearly
destitute of paint, and the papers on many of the walls had completely
lost their original patterns. In many instances there were no papers,
only discolored walls, which at one time had been gay with paint and
rendered beautiful with pictures. The windows were destitute of curtains;
the carpets on the floors were reduced to holes and patches. The old
pictures in the picture gallery still remained, however, and looked down
on the young girls who flitted about there on rainy days with kindly, or
searching, or malevolent eyes as suited the characters of those men and
women who were portrayed in them.