we
were apt to have either a feast or a famine, for at first we often
forgot to provide our dinners. If this were the case Maggie was sure to
serve us with most derisive elegance, and make us wait for as much
ceremony as she thought necessary for one of Mrs. Lancaster's
dinner-parties.

The west parlor was our favorite room down stairs. It had a great
fireplace framed in blue and white Dutch tiles which ingeniously and
instructively represented the careers of the good and the bad man; the
starting-place of each being a very singular cradle in the centre at the
top. The last two of the series are very high art: a great coffin stands
in the foreground of each, and the virtuous man is being led off by two
disagreeable-looking angels, while the wicked one is hastening from an
indescribable but unpleasant assemblage of claws and horns and eyes
which is rapidly advancing from the distance, open-mouthed, and bringing
a chain with it.

There was a large cabinet holding all the small curiosities and
knick-knacks there seemed to be no other place for,--odd china figures
and cups and vases, unaccountable Chinese carvings and exquisite corals
and sea-shells, minerals and Swiss wood-work, and articles of _vertu_
from the South Seas. Underneath were stored boxes of letters and old
magazines; for this was one of the houses where nothing seems to have
been thrown away. In one parting we found a parcel of old manuscript
sermons, the existence of which was a mystery, until Kate remembered
there had been a gifted son of the house who entered the ministry and
soon died. The windows had each a pane of stained glass, and on the wide
sills we used to put our immense bouquets of field-flowers. There was
one place which I liked and sat in more than any other. The chimney
filled nearly the whole side of the room, all but this little corner,
where there was just room for a very comfortable high-backed cushioned
chair, and a narrow window where I always had a bunch of fresh green
ferns in a tall champagne-glass. I used to write there often, and always
sat there when Kate sang and played. She sent for a tuner, and used to
successfully coax the long-imprisoned music from the antiquated piano,
and sing for her visitors by the hour. She almost always sang her oldest
songs, for they seemed most in keeping with everything about us. I used
to fancy that the portraits liked our being there. There was one young
girl who seemed solitary and forlorn among