SHUT UP!

Exasperating 'little boy'.  For those of us who grew up with brothers or cousins this is no fiction.  Skipped most of the dialogue while searching for some architectural kernel and hit pay dirt with the great description of Lord Stoke's castle.  Totally exhausted and glad it's over.  ♥

THE DEMON IN THE HOUSE - 1

"Rising Castle was situated on a hill at the confluence of the Rising and Rushmore.  It boasted a Norman keep in fair condition and a good deal of the original walls.  The fourth Lord Stoke had defended the castle against Cromwell, who had unpleasantly battered him into honorable capitulation.  After several generations of neglect the present earl's great-grandfather had built a comfortable mansion from the stones of the ruins.  The present owner had put such parts of the castle as were still standing into tolerable repair and allowed the public to visit them at sixpence a head."  ...   "Lord Stoke, with maddening slowness and infinite wealth of detailed explanation of what he and his architect had been doing, then  showed them the piece of Norman wall that he was rebuilding, the foundations of what might have been a chapel, and the room in which it was on the whole improbable that Charles II had slept after the battle of Worcester."

HIGH RISING - 10

"High Rising was a pretty, unpretentious village consisting of one street, whose more imposing houses were vaguely Georgian.  Laura's house stood at the end, so that she had no more than a mile to walk to Low Rising, which was only a church, a vicarage, a farm, and a handful of cottages."

HIGH RISING - 8

BLOOD SPORTS III

"Luckily the hounds met twice during the week, which faintly distracted Tony's attention from railway systems, and he was able to give her a mass of authoritative and mostly erroneous information about hunting."

HIGH RISING - 3

"Low Rising Manor House still looked like the farmer's home which it had been for several hundred years..."

HIGH RISING - 2

"The Knoxes' house stood apart, down a turning of its own which led nowhere in particular, and behind it fields stretched away to the slopes of the hills".  ...   "At the far end stood the Knoxes' house, lonely among the water-meadows, often surrounded by thick white mists, a little sinister...  ...The front door, ordinarily left open, was shut this evening, and Laura had to ring".