ir turn followed by two dumb-waiters, two family Bibles, two warming-
pans, and two intermixed sets of chairs.

But the position last reached--the chimney-corner--was, after all, the
most attractive side of the parallelogram. It was large enough to admit,
in addition to Geoffrey himself, Geoffrey's wife, her chair, and her work-
table, entirely within the line of the mantel, without danger or even
inconvenience from the heat of the fire; and was spacious enough overhead
to allow of the insertion of wood poles for the hanging of bacon, which
were cloaked with long shreds of soot, floating on the draught like the
tattered banners on the walls of ancient aisles.

These points were common to most chimney corners of the neighbourhood;
but one feature there was which made Geoffrey's fireside not only an
object of interest to casual aristocratic visitors--to whom every cottage
fireside was more or less a curiosity--but the admiration of friends who
were accustomed to fireplaces of the ordinary hamlet model. This
peculiarity was a little window in the chimney-back, almost over the
fire, around which the smoke crept caressingly when it left the
perpendicular course. The window-board was curiously stamped with black
circles, burnt thereon by the heated bottoms of drinking-cups, which had
rested there after previously standing on the hot ashes of the hearth for
the purpose of warming their contents, the result giving to the ledge the
look of an envelope which has passed through innumerable post-offices.

Fancy was gliding about the room preparing dinner, her head inclining now
to the right, now to the left, and singing the tips and ends of tunes
that sprang up in her mind like mushrooms. The footsteps of Mrs. Day
could be heard in the room overhead. Fancy went finally to the door.

"Father! Dinner."

A tall spare figure was seen advancing by the window with periodical
steps, and the keeper entered from the garden. He appeared to be a man
who was always looking down, as if trying to recollect something he said
yesterday. The surface of his face was fissured rather than wrinkled,
and over and under his eyes were folds which seemed as a kind of exterior
eyelids. His nose had been thrown backwards by a blow in a poaching
fray, so that when the sun was low and shining in his face, people could
see far into his head. There was in him a quiet grimness, which would in
his moments of displeasure have become surliness, had it n