"H-e-m! Hem!"

As Grandfather did not know that any person was in the room, he started up
in great surprise, and peeped hither and thither, behind the chair, and
into the recess by the fireside, and at the dark nook yonder, near the
bookcase. Nobody could he see.

"Pooh!" said Grandfather to himself, "I must have been dreaming."

But, just as he was going to resume his seat, Grandfather happened to look
at the great chair. The rays of fire-light were flickering upon it in such
a manner that it really seemed as if its oaken frame were all alive. What!
Did it not move its elbow? There, too! It certainly lifted one of its
ponderous fore-legs, as if it had a notion of drawing itself a little
nearer to the fire. Meanwhile, the lion's head nodded at Grandfather, with
as polite and sociable a look as a lion's visage, carved in oak, could
possibly be expected to assume. Well, this is strange!

"Good evening, my old friend," said the dry and husky voice, now a little
clearer than before. "We have been intimately acquainted so long, that I
think it high time we have a chat together."

Grandfather was looking straight at the lion's head, and could not be
mistaken in supposing that it moved its lips. So here the mystery was all
explained.

"I was not aware," said Grandfather, with a civil salutation to his oaken
companion, "that you possessed the faculty of speech. Otherwise, I should
often have been glad to converse with such a solid, useful, and
substantial, if not brilliant member of society."

"Oh!" replied the ancient chair, in a quiet and easy tone, for it had now
cleared its throat of the dust of ages. "I am naturally a silent and
incommunicative sort of character. Once or twice, in the course of a
century, I unclose my lips. When the gentle Lady Arbella departed this
life, I uttered a groan. When the honest mint-master weighed his plump
daughter against the pine-tree shillings, I chuckled audibly at the joke.
When old Simon Bradstreet took the place of the tyrant Andros, I joined in
the general huzza, and capered upon my wooden legs, for joy. To be sure,
the bystanders were so fully occupied with their own feelings, that my
sympathy was quite unnoticed."

"And have you often held a private chat with your friends?" asked
Grandfather.

"Not often," answered the chair. "I once talked with Sir William Phips,
and communicated my ideas about the witchcraft delusion. Cotton Mather had
several conversations with me, and d