I doubt whether prettier rooms were ever seen than the drawing-room, the library, and the dining-room at Nethercoats.

They were all on the ground-floor, and all opened out on to the garden and lawn.

The library, which was the largest of the three, was a handsome chamber, and so filled as to make it well known in the University as one of the best private collections in that part of England.

But perhaps the gardens of Nethercoats constituted its greatest glory.

They were spacious and excellently kept up, and had been originally laid out with that knowledge of gardening without which no garden, merely as a garden, can be effective.