Without further adventure, they reached the dwelling of Governor
Bellingham. This was a large wooden house, built in a fashion of
which there are specimens still extant in the streets of our
older towns now moss-grown, crumbling to decay, and melancholy
at heart with the many sorrowful or joyful occurrences,
remembered or forgotten, that have happened and passed away
within their dusky chambers. Then, however, there was the
freshness of the passing year on its exterior, and the
cheerfulness, gleaming forth from the sunny windows, of a human
habitation, into which death had never entered. It had, indeed,
a very cheery aspect, the walls being overspread with a kind of
stucco, in which fragments of broken glass were plentifully
intermixed; so that, when the sunshine fell aslant-wise over the
front of the edifice, it glittered and sparkled as if diamonds
had been flung against it by the double handful. The brilliancy
might have be fitted Aladdin's palace rather than the mansion of
a grave old Puritan ruler. It was further decorated with strange
and seemingly cabalistic figures and diagrams, suitable to the
quaint taste of the age which had been drawn in the stucco, when
newly laid on, and had now grown hard and durable, for the
admiration of after times.
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Pearl, looking at this bright wonder of a house began to caper
and dance, and imperatively required that the whole breadth of
sunshine should be stripped off its front, and given her to play
with.
"No, my little Pearl!" said her mother; "thou must gather thine
own sunshine. I have none to give thee!"
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