se, which accounts for the agent's mistake.

One day, just as Archie was going out, he found on the doorstep a
charming lady with a very pretty daughter.

"May we see over the house?" she asked.

"Certainly," said Archie.

He showed them all over the house, from cellar to garret. He says he
initiated them into the mysteries of the dark cupboard, and he says he
showed them everything of historic interest in the family. The daughter,
he vows, was tremendously interested. When they had seen everything and
Archie had brought them back to the hall, the charming mother said, "And
when is the house to let?"

"Oh! it's not to let," said Archie.

He says he assured them it was no trouble at all, etc.!

In every small house we went, Nannie trudged laboriously up to the
top, and I heard her murmuring, "Night, day," as she went backward and
forward, from one room to the other. At last we found a small house in
Chelsea of which she thoroughly approved. She couldn't exonerate the
agent from all blame in saying that there were views of the river from
the window. "Not but what there might be if we, leaned out far enough,
but we can't because of the bars." It was the very bars that had
attracted her in the first instance, from the outside. Bars meant a
nursery. Iron bars may not make a cage, but they undoubtedly make a
nursery.

She stood at the top window and looked out on the green trees, and a
blackbird was obliging enough, at that very moment, to sing a love-song.
Perhaps it was about nurseries, and Nannie understood it; at all events
she decided there and then to take the house. "Of course," she said, "I
know there's no nursery wanted, but I don't hold with houses that can't
have nurseries in them, if they want to." That gave me an idea! It came
like a flash. Nannie should have her nursery!

Of course this all happened some years ago, when the home at Hames was
broken up. With the help of Diana I managed it beautifully. It was kept
a dead secret. Diana collected, or rather allowed me to collect, all the
things Nannie had specially loved in the home nursery, which I am sure
cost Diana a pang, as she was very anxious her children should abide by
tradition and grow up among the things their father had loved as a boy;
but she sent them all, even the rocking-horse, to me for my nursery.

The walls I had papered just as our nursery had been papered. Even the
old kettle was rescued from oblivion, and stood on the hob. It was
s