In the village it was as bad.

Time, which had dealt so kindly with Vandon itself, had taken the straggling village in hand too.

Nothing could be more picturesque than the crazy black-and-white houses, with lichen on their broken-in thatch, and the plaster peeling off from between the irregular beams of black wood; nothing more picturesque--and nothing more miserable.
When Time puts in his burnt umbers and brown madders with a lavish hand, and introduces his beautiful irregularities of outline, and his artistic disrepair, he does not look to the drainage, and takes no thought for holes in the roof.
Dare could not go out without eager women sallying out of cottages as he passed, begging him just to come in and walk up-stairs.

They would say no more--but would the new squire walk up-stairs?
And Dare would stumble up and see enough to promise.

Alas! how much he promised in those early days.