My grandfather’s house stood a little back from the main street, in the shadow of two handsome elms, whose overgrown boughs would dash themselves against the gables whenever the wind blew hard.  In the rear was a pleasant garden, covering perhaps a quarter of an acre, full of plum-trees and gooseberry bushes.  These trees were old settlers, and are all dead now, excepting one, which bears a purple plum as big as an egg.  This tree, as I remark, is still standing, and a more beautiful tree to tumble out of never grew anywhere.  In the northwestern corner of the garden were the stables and carriage-house opening upon a narrow lane.  You may imagine that I made an early visit to that locality to inspect Gypsy.  Indeed, I paid her a visit every half-hour during the first day of my arrival.  At the twenty-fourth visit she trod on my foot rather heavily, as a reminder, probably, that I was wearing out my welcome.  She was a knowing little pony, that Gypsy, and I shall have much to say of her in the course of these pages.

Gypsy’s quarters were all that could be wished, but nothing among my new surroundings gave me more satisfaction than the cosey sleeping apartment that had been prepared for myself.  It was the hall room over the front door.

I had never had a chamber all to myself before, and this one, about twice the size of our state-room on board the Typhoon, was a marvel of neatness and comfort.  Pretty chintz curtains hung at the window, and a patch quilt of more colors than were in Joseph’s coat covered the little truckle-bed.  The pattern of the wall-paper left nothing to be desired in that line.  On a gray background were small bunches of leaves, unlike any that ever grew in this world; and on every other bunch perched a yellow-bird, pitted with crimson spots, as if it had just recovered from a severe attack of the small-pox.  That no such bird ever existed did not detract from my admiration of each one.  There were two hundred and sixty-eight of these birds in all, not counting those split in two where the paper was badly joined.  I counted them once when I was laid up with a fine black eye, and falling asleep immediately dreamed that the whole flock suddenly took wing and flew out of the window.  From that time I was never able to regard them as merely inanimate objects.

A wash-stand in the corner, a chest of carved mahogany drawers, a looking-glass in a filigreed frame, and a high-backed chair studded with brass nails like a coffin, constituted the furniture.  Over the head of the bed were two oak shelves, holding perhaps a dozen books—­among which were Theodore, or The Peruvians; Robinson Crusoe; an odd volume of Tristram Shandy; Baxter’s Saints’ Rest, and a fine English edition of the Arabian Nights, with six hundred wood-cuts by Harvey.