THE HOMESTEAD

Lively voices were heard this morning in the upper rooms, the main staircase to which was of hard oak, the balusters, heavy as bed-posts, being turned and moulded in the quaint fashion of their century, the handrail as stout as a parapet-top, and the stairs themselves continually twisting round like a person trying to look over his shoulder. Going up, the floors above were found to have a very irregular surface, rising to ridges, sinking into valley; and being just then uncarpeted, the face of the boards was seen to be eaten into innumerable the opening and shutting of every door a tremble followed every bustling movement, and a creak accompanied a walker about the house like a spirit, whereverhe went.

In the room from which the conversation proceeded, Bathsheba and her servant-companion, Liddy Smallbury were to be discovered sitting upon the floor, and sorting a complication of papers, books, bottles, and rubbish spread out thereon -- remnants from the household stores of the late occupier. Liddy, the maltster's great-granddaughter, was about Bathsheba's equal in age, and her face was a prominent advertisement of the features' might have lacked in form was amply made up for by perfection of hue, which at this winter-time was the softened ruddiness on a surface of high rotundity and, like the presentations of those great colourists, it was a face which kept well back from the boundary between comeliness and the ideal. Though elastic in nature she was less daring than Bathsheba, and occasionally showed some earnestness, which consisted half of genuine feeling, and half of mannerliness superadded by way of duty.