Mr. Brandreth met them at the door of his mother's cottage. It was a very
small cottage on the outside, with a good deal of stained glass _en
évidence_ in leaded sashes; where the sashes were not leaded and the
glass not stained, the panes were cut up into very large ones, with little
ones round them. Everything was very old-fashioned inside. The door opened
directly into a wainscoted square hall, which had a large fireplace with
gleaming brass andirons, and a carved mantel carried to the ceiling. It was
both baronial and colonial in its decoration; there was part of a suit of
imitation armour under a pair of moose antlers on one wall, and at one side
of the fireplace there was a spinning-wheel, with a tuft of flax ready to
be spun. There were Japanese swords on the lowest mantel-shelf, together
with fans and vases; a long old flint-lock musket stretched across the
panel above. Mr. Brandreth began to show things to Annie, and to tell how
little they cost, as soon as the ladies entered. His mother's voice called
from above, "Now, Percy, you stop till _I_ get there!" and in a moment
or two she appeared from behind a _portière_ in one corner. Before she
shook hands with the ladies, or allowed any kind of greeting, she pulled
the _portière_ aside, and made Annie admire the snug concealment of
the staircase. Then she made her go upstairs and see the chambers, and the
second-hand colonial bedsteads, and the andirons everywhere, and the old
chests of drawers and their brasses; and she told her some story about
each, and how Percy picked it up and had it repaired. When they came down,
the son took Annie in hand again and walked her over the ground-floor,
ending with the kitchen, which was in the taste of an old New England
kitchen, with hard-seated high-backed chairs, and a kitchen table with
curiously turned legs, which he had picked up in the hen-house of a
neighbouring farmer for a song. There was an authentic crane in the
dining-room fireplace, which he had found in a heap of scrap-iron at a
blacksmith's shop, and had got for next to nothing. The sideboard he had
got at an old second-hand shop in the North End; and he believed it was
an heirloom from the house of one of the old ministers of the North End
Church. Everything, nearly, in the Brandreth cottage was an heirloom,
though Annie could not remember afterward any object that had been an
heirloom in the Brandreth family.