gs of a boy and a girl, rather
charming, which bore the initials "J.R."--Timothy had always believed
they might turn out to be Joshua Reynolds, but Soames, who admired
them, had discovered that they were only John Robinson; and a doubtful
Morland of a white pony being shod. Deep-red plush curtains, ten
high-backed dark mahogany chairs with deep-red plush seats, a Turkey
carpet, and a mahogany dining-table as large as the room was small,
such was an apartment which Soames could remember unchanged in soul or
body since he was four years old. He looked especially at the two
drawings, and thought: 'I shall buy those at the sale.'

From the dining-room he passed into Timothy's study. He did not
remember ever having been in that room. It was lined from floor to
ceiling with volumes, and he looked at them with curiosity. One wall
seemed devoted to educational books, which Timothy's firm had published
two generations back--sometimes as many as twenty copies of one book.
Soames read their titles and shuddered. The middle wall had precisely
the same books as used to be in the library at his own father's in Park
Lane, from which he deduced the fancy that James and his youngest
brother had gone out together one day and bought a brace of small
libraries. The third wall he approached with more excitement. Here,
surely, Timothy's own taste would be found. It was. The books were
dummies. The fourth wall was all heavily curtained window. And turned
towards it was a large chair with a mahogany reading-stand attached, on
which a yellowish and folded copy of The Times, dated July 6, 1914, the
day Timothy first failed to come down, as if in preparation for the
war, seemed waiting for him still. In a corner stood a large globe of
that world never visited by Timothy, deeply convinced of the unreality
of everything but England, and permanently upset by the sea, on which
he had been very sick one Sunday afternoon in 1836, out of a pleasure
boat off the pier at Brighton, with Juley and Hester, Swithin and Hatty
Chessman; all due to Swithin, who was always taking things into his
head, and who, thank goodness, had been sick too. Soames knew all about
it, having heard the tale fifty times at least from one or other of
them. He went up to the globe, and gave it a spin; it emitted a faint
creak and moved about an inch, bringing into his purview a
daddy-long-legs which had died on it in latitude 44.

'Mausoleum!' he thought. 'George was right!' And h