eye. Barrie might
have felt the beauty of the graceful lines if she had given her
attention to these scattered relics of a past before there was a
Grandma; but a group of very different furniture beckoned her curiosity.

The fact that there was a group, and that it seemed in the dimness to be
alike in colour and design, suggested mystery of some sort; and,
besides, it was almost impossible to imagine such furniture adorning
this house.

Evidently it had been taken bodily out of one room. Why? As she asked
herself this question Barrie threaded her way delicately along narrow
paths between chairs, extraordinary leather or hairy cowhide trunks and
thrilling bandboxes of enormous size, made quaintly beautiful with
Chinese wall-paper. She wanted to examine the grouped furniture whose
pale coverings and gilded wood glimmered attractively even in the
darkest corner of the garret.

It certainly was the darkest and farthest. Was this a coincidence, or
had there been a special reason for huddling these things out of sight?
There was not even a clear path to them, though there seemed to have
been method in planning most of the lanes that led from one luggage or
furniture village to another. Nothing led to this village built against
a wall. Its site was in a no-thoroughfare, and, perhaps by design,
perhaps by accident, a barricade had been erected before it; not a very
high barricade, but a wall or series of stumbling-blocks made up of
useless litter. If there could be a special corner of disgrace in this
land where all things were under decree of banishment, here was the
corner.

By means of crawling over, under, and between numerous strangely
assorted objects which formed the barricade, the intruder arrived,
somewhat the worse for wear, at her destination. The furniture village
was composed, she discovered, of a set of blue satin-covered chairs and
sofas, with elaborately carved and gilded frames. There were tables to
match, and an empty glass cabinet, two long mirrors with marble brackets
underneath, also a highly ornamental chest of drawers and a bedstead of
gilded cane and wood, with cupids holding garlands of carved roses.

Barrie began talking to herself half aloud, according to
long-established habit. "Good gracious me!" she exclaimed so inelegantly
that it was well Miss Hepburn could not hear. "What things to find in
this house! They're like--like canary birds in an ironmonger's shop. Who
could have owned them?"