The tongues of the bells in the church steeple at the end of the street dart sharp and clean as icicles in the freezing air. The sky is the deep blue of sapphires, the snow bums blue-white, lighted windows blossom one after the other.
In the house opposite they are having a party. A huge holly wreath tied with red satin ribbon hangs on the door knocker. Gold light streams from the windows, and inside you can see the gorgeous Christmas-tree and the guests in their fine clothes. In one room people are dancing to the music of a piano and violin: in another, boys and girls are just sitting down to a table decorated with flowers and candles and toys. How gay all the faces are! What peace and friendliness inside the festive rooms; and the beautiful frozen night out of doors. It makes you feel warm and comfortable just to look at it all.
Or, maybe, delicate muslin ruffles are floating gently in and out of the open window in a warm breeze. The air enters scented with roses, with honeysuckle and clover, fresh with the smell of grass which men have been cutting all day long in the fields. Stripped to the waist, their torsos beautiful as light bronze, the strong young haymakers rhythmically swing their scythes through the final swaths. The heavy haywains lumber home in the dusk. From the village rises the sound of singing and laughter; a cheerful clatter of pans comes from the kitchens where women in bright aprons are preparing the evening meal. Lovers walk in the orchards under the ripening fruit. Grave and benign like archangels, the white winged mountains stand in the darkening sky.
Yes, there’s always something fascinating to be seen from the windows. And then there’s the house itself, a perpetual source of interest and surprise. Why, you could easily spend a lifetime investigating the library alone. Not to mention the pictures, the clocks, the tapestries, and the curious objects stored in the different rooms; the attics crowded with trunks, every one packed full of unimaginable and exciting treasures; the porcelain, silver, silk, crystal, ivory, jade, collected through many centuries and in many lands; the clothes folded away in the cupboards; the very pots and pans in the kitchen, the canisters full of strange spices, the herbs and cordials and preserves, the vast stone urnlike crocks on the storeroom floor.
It’s really impossible to mention even a fraction of the riches contained in a house so inexhaustibly endowed with wonders from all over the world, as well as with its own unique, complex, incomparable individuality. You get confused when you try to describe it; the mind is embarrassed by such a wealth of material; you hardly know where to begin or where to leave off.
Well, the line has to be drawn somewhere: and that’s why it seems useless to say any more except that no discriminating person would ever willingly leave such a house once they had taken up residence in it; or find any other house even tolerable afterwards.