`` Then do n't ask me any questions till thou hast , for I am a man of honour . '' And at that they both laughed again , and thought it a very good joke . And by this time they were come up to the great iron gates in front of the house ; and Tom stared through them at the rhododendrons and azaleas , which were all in flower ; and then at the house itself , and wondered how many chimneys there were in it , and how long ago it was built , and what was the man 's name that built it , and whether he got much money for his job ? These last were very difficult questions to answer . For Harthover had been built at ninety different times , and in nineteen different styles , and looked as if somebody had built a whole street of houses of every imaginable shape , and then stirred them together with a spoon . For the attics were Anglo-Saxon . The third door Norman . The second Cinque-cento . The first-floor Elizabethan . The right wing Pure Doric . The centre Early English , with a huge portico copied from the Parthenon . The left wing pure Boeotian , which the country folk admired most of all , became it was just like the new barracks in the town , only three times as big . The grand staircase was copied from the Catacombs at Rome . The back staircase from the Tajmahal at Agra . This was built by Sir John 's great-great-great-uncle , who won , in Lord Clive 's Indian Wars , plenty of money , plenty of wounds , and no more taste than his betters . The cellars were copied from the caves of Elephanta . The offices from the Pavilion at Brighton . And the rest from nothing in heaven , or earth , or under the earth . So that Harthover House was a great puzzle to antiquarians , and a thorough Naboth 's vineyard to critics , and architects , and all persons who like meddling with other men 's business , and spending other men 's money . So they were all setting upon poor Sir John , year after year , and trying to talk him into spending a hundred thousand pounds or so , in building , to please them and not himself .
But he always put them off , like a canny North-countryman XXXXX he was .
For So after as in like of till to upon