t was let through windows of such
glass as is seen round the bottom of bird-cages. This final staircase
was even in the fullest daylight very dim and eerie, and was permeated
always with a smell of burnt grease and damp cloths. Half-way down
Michael shrunk back against Nurse's petticoats, for in front of him
yawned a terrible cavern exuding chill.

"What's that?" he gasped.

"Bless the boy, he'll have me over!" cried Nurse.

"Oh, Nanny, what is it--that hole? Michael doesn't like that hole."

"There's a milksop. Tut-tut! Frightened by a coal-cellar! Get on with
you, do."

Michael, holding tightly to the banisters, achieved the ground and was
hustled into the twilight of the morning-room. Stella was fitted into
her high chair; the circular tray was brought over from behind and
thumped into its place with a click: Michael was lifted up and thumped
down into another high chair and pushed close up to the table so that
his knees were chafed by the sharp edge and his thighs pinched by a
loose strand of cane. Nurse, blowing as usual through closed lips, cut
up his meat, and dinner was carried through in an atmosphere of greens
and fat and warm, milk-and-water and threats of Gregory-powder, if every
bit were not eaten.

Presently the tramping of furniture-men was renewed and the
morning-room, was made darker still by the arrival of a second van which
pulled up at right angles to the first. In the course of dinner, Cook
entered. She was a fat masculine creature who always kept her arms
folded beneath a coarse and spotted apron; and after Cook came Annie the
housemaid, tall and thin and anaemic. These two watched the children
eating, while they gossiped with Nurse.

"Isn't Mrs. Fane coming at all, then?" enquired Cook.

"For a few minutes--for a few minutes," said Nurse quickly, and Michael
would not have been so very suspicious had he not observed the nodding
of her head long after there was any need to nod it.

"Is mother going to stay with us?" he asked.

"Stay? Stay? Of course she'll stay. Stay for ever," asserted Nurse in
her bustling voice.

"Funny not to be here when the furniture came," said Cook.

"Yes, wasn't it?" echoed Annie. "It _was_ funny. That's what I thought.
How funny, I thought."

"Not that I suppose things will be what you might call properly arranged
just yet?" Cook speculated.

"Everything arranged. Everything arranged," Nurse snapped. "Nothing to
arrange. Nothing to arrange."

And as if