noon
* * * * * Now I went with more intelligence and caution , and got on very well , travelling seven days , never at night , except it was very clear , never at more than twenty or twenty-five miles , and crawling through tunnels . I do not know the maze into which the train took me , for very soon after leaving Canterbury it must have gone down some branch-line , and though the names were marked at stations , that hardly helped me , for of their situation relatively to London I was seldom sure . Moreover , again and again was my progress impeded by trains on the metals , when I would have to run back to a shunting-point or a siding , and , in two instances , these being far behind , changed from my own to the impeding engine . On the first day I travelled unhindered till noon , when I stopped in open country that seemed uninhabited for ages , only that half a mile to the left , on a shaded sward , was a large stone house of artistic design , coated with tinted harling , the roof of red Ruabon tiles , and timbered gables . I walked to it after another row with putting out the fire and arranging for a new one , the day being bright and mild , with great masses of white cloud in the sky . The house had an outer and an inner hall , three reception rooms , fine oil-paintings , a kind of museum , and a large kitchen . In a bed-room above-stairs I found three women with servants ' caps , and a footman , arranged in a strange symmetrical way , head to head , like rays of a star .