No one could ever understand "what he saw in the dirty place," and at one time he had been forbidden to go there.

Then he had cried and stamped and shouted, so that he had been allowed to return.

Amongst the things that he saw there were the reflections that the outside world made upon the glass; it would be stained, sometimes, with a strange, green reflection of the fields beyond the wall; sometimes it would catch the blue of the sky, or the red and gold of the setting sun; sometimes it would be grey with waving shadows across its surface, as though one were under water.
Through the dirty windows the country, on fine days, shone like distant tapestry, and in the glass that covered the farther side of the place strange reflections were caught: of cows, horses, walls, and trees--as though in a kind of magic mirror.
Another thing that Jeremy felt there, was that he was in a glass cage swinging over the whole world.

If one shut one's eyes one could easily fancy that one was swinging out--swinging--swinging, and that, suddenly perhaps, the cage would be detached from the house and go sailing, like a magic carpet, to Arabia and Persia, and anywhere you pleased to command.
To-day the glass burnt like fire, and the green fields came floating up to be transfigured there like running water.

The house was utterly still; the red glass door shut off the world.