A turning and they were before a shallow story-and-a-half frame house which squatted like an old roadside beggar behind a weather-beaten picket fence.

The sagging shingle roof sloped abruptly; there were four little windows downstairs and two smaller upstairs.

The door was in the center of the house; a weedy path led from its crooked step, between two patches of weedy grass, to the gate in the fence.
"Whoa!" shouted Jeb, with the double purpose of stopping the mare and informing the house of his arrival.

Then to Susan: "You git down and I'll drive round to the barn yonder." He nodded toward a dilapidated clapboard structure, small and mean, set between a dirty lopsided straw heap and a manure heap.

"Go right in and make yourself at home.