workmen were not to come till the day after, she contented herself
with merely sweeping down the house in the afternoon, ready for the
whitewashers next day; and then, locking all up safe, with old Growler,
the dog, inside, she set off, after an early cup of tea, to get in her
provisions for the next day.

It was, indeed, a change! The bed-rooms had lost their nice white little
beds and curtains; the drawing-room was a dusty desert, with no piano
and no work-tables; while the kitchen yawned like a gloomy cavern,
stripped of its bright tins and cheerful dishes. And the dusky shades of
evening fell and wrapped it in still darker shadows, while the distant
roar and din of the streets seemed to sound quite far off. So then the
crickets, who felt sure something unusual must be the matter, chirped,
and made enquiries of each other, in the most noisy manner; while the
mice, quite enraptured with the quiet and vacancy, came out and had
regular pic-nic parties all over the house.

The furniture and packages had all been stowed away in one large room at
the top of the house, which had then been securely locked and fastened.
But one nook had been neglected in the midst of all the bustle. Busy as
she had been with preparing the summer clothes, putting away all the
winter ones, and setting aside all in her own particular domain, Nurse
had utterly overlooked the old toy cupboard! It is true it was now
seldom used; for even Florry cared little for the broken and discarded
toys it contained, and so it was not to be wondered at that the old
store of rubbish had not been remembered. Some officious person had
unlatched the door and left it ajar, and a good blast of wind in the
afternoon, when old Mrs. Davis set the window open first, had pushed it
quite back, though she had not observed the fact when she closed the
nursery windows before she left. On the floor lay a heap of old leaden
tea-things, mixed up with some of the inhabitants of a battered Noah's
Ark which lay empty on its side on the top shelf. Several old marbles
were nestled cosily up in an old toy kitchen which had been turned
upside down to receive them. A humming-top, whose key had departed, lay
side by side with a shuttlecock that had been shorn of half its
feathers. The skipping-rope had become hopelessly entangled with the
tail of the kite; the hoop had hung itself round the neck of a very
ancient rocking-horse, whose mane and tail had long disappeared; to add
to its mi