After dinner, parish business took the Rector to his study, and Mary proposed that they should sit in the kitchen.
"It's not the kitchen really," Elizabeth hastened to explain to her guest, "but we call it so—"
"It's the nicest room in the house," said Edward.
"It's got the old rests by the side of the fireplace, where the men hung their guns," said Elizabeth, leading the way, with a tall brass candlestick in her hand, down a passage. "Show Mr. Denham the steps, Christopher… . When the Ecclesiastical Commissioners were here two years ago they said this was the most interesting part of the house. These narrow bricks prove that it is five hundred years old—five hundred years, I think—they may have said six." She, too, felt an impulse to exaggerate the age of the bricks, as her father had
