With the general's death--it had occurred some twenty years before--the expected had happened. Not only was the pot nearly empty, but the various drains which it had sustained had so undermined the family rent-roll that an equally disastrous effect had been produced on the mansion itself (one of the few pieces of property, by the way, that the father had left to his only son and heir unencumbered, with the exception of a suit in chancery from which nobody ever expected a penny), the only dry spots in St. George's finances being the few ground rents remaining from his grandmother's legacy and the little he could pick up at the law.
It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that certain changes and deteriorations had taken place inside and out of the historic building--changes which never in the slightest degree affected the even-tempered St. George, who had retained his own private apartments regardless of the rest of the house--but changes which, in all justice to the irascible old spendthrift, would have lifted that gentleman out of his grave could he have realized their effect and extent. What a shock, for instance, would the most punctilious man of his time have received when he found his front basement rented for a law office, to say nothing of a disreputable tin sign nailed to a shutter--where in the olden time he and his cronies had toasted their shins before blazing logs, the toddies kept hot on the hearth! And what a row would he have raised had he known that the rose-garden was entirely neglected and given over to the dogs and their kennels; the library in the second story stripped of its books and turned into a guest-chamber, and the books themselves consigned to the basement; the oak-panelled dining-room transformed into a bedchamber for St. George, and the white-and-gold drawing-room fronting the street reduced to a mere living-room where his son and heir made merry with his friends! And then the shrinkages all about! When a room could be dispensed with, it was locked up. When a shingle broke loose, it stayed loose; and so did the bricks capping the chimneys, and the leaky rain-spouts that spattered the dingy bricks, as well as the cracks and crannies that marred the ceilings and walls.