The little blue drawing-room, which was always used instead, was a far more cheery apartment, with its sunny French window and fresh muslin curtains, and the blue chintz covers on the chairs. But of all the rooms I think the quaintest was the kitchen. It was by far the oldest part of the house; the great beams of the roof, roughly hewn out with an axe and black with age, had been a portion of the ancient castle, and so had the mullioned windows, with their deep, old-fashioned seats and diamond panes, filled with green, uneven glass. It looked a cheerful place, with its polished-oak dressers and shining brasses, and on a winter's evening, when the shutters were closed and the settle drawn close to the fire, it seemed the cosiest spot in the world; and Peggy and Bobby would often escape from the sober atmosphere of the dining-room to pull their little stools into the ingle nook, and listen to Nancy's wonderful tales of ghosts and goblins, which seemed twice as thrilling when the wind was howling like a banshee in the chimney, and rattling the doors till they could fancy that spirit fingers were tapping on the panels, and only waiting a chance to catch them in the dark passages, and sent such cold shivers running down their backs that they grew almost too frightened to go to bed.