It made her neck ache staring up fourteen feet and a half to the costly center ornament from which the heavy chandelier depended.

All the rooms of the old house had been low, and when Peterkin built the new one, he made ample amends.
"I mean to lick the crowd," he said; and a man was sent to Collingwood, and Grassy Spring, and Brier Hill, and lastly to Tracy Park, to take the height of the lower rooms.

Those at Tracy Park were found to be the highest, and measured just twelve feet, so Peterkin's orders were to "run 'em up--run 'em up fourteen feet, for I swan I'll get ahead of 'em." So they were run up fourteen feet, and by some mistake, half a foot higher, looking when finished so cold and cheerless and bare that the ambitious man ransacked New York and Boston and even sent to London for ornaments for his walls.

Books were bought by the square yard, pictures by the wholesale, mirrors by the dozen, with bronzes and brackets and sconces and tapestry and banners and screens and clocks and cabinets and statuary, with every kind of furniture imaginable, from the costliest rugs and carpets to the most exquisite inlaid tables to be found in Florence or Venice.

For Peterkin sent there for them by a gentleman to whom he said: 'Git the best there is if it costs a fortune.