e went out and up the
stairs. On the half landing he stopped before the case of stuffed
humming-birds which had delighted his childhood. They looked not a day
older, suspended on wires above pampas-grass. If the case were opened
the birds would not begin to hum, but the whole thing would crumble, he
suspected. It wouldn't be worth putting that into the sale! And
suddenly he was caught by a memory of Aunt Ann--dear old Aunt
Ann--holding him by the hand in front of that case and saying: "Look,
Soamey! Aren't they bright and pretty, dear little humming-birds!"
Soames remembered his own answer: "They don't hum, Auntie." He must
have been six, in a black velveteen suit with a light-blue collar--he
remembered that suit well! Aunt Ann with her ringlets, and her spidery
kind hands, and her grave old aquiline smile--a fine old lady, Aunt
Ann! He moved on up to the drawing-room door. There on each side of it
were the groups of miniatures. Those he would certainly buy in! The
miniatures of his four aunts, one of his uncle Swithin adolescent, and
one of his uncle Nicholas as a boy. They had all been painted by a
young lady friend of the family at a time, 1830, about, when miniatures
were considered very genteel, and lasting too, painted as they were on
ivory. Many a time had he heard the tale of that young lady: "Very
talented, my dear; she had quite a weakness for Swithin, and very soon
after she went into a consumption and died: so like Keats--we often
spoke of it."

Well, there they were! Ann, Juley, Hester, Susan--quite a small child;
Swithin, with sky-blue eyes, pink cheeks, yellow curls, white
waistcoat--large as life; and Nicholas, like Cupid with an eye on
heaven. Now he came to think of it, Uncle Nick had always been rather
like that--a wonderful man to the last. Yes, she must have had talent,
and miniatures had a certain back-watered cachet of their own, little
subject to the currents of competition on aesthetic Change. Soames
opened the drawing-room door. The room was dusted, the furniture
uncovered, the curtains drawn back, precisely as if his aunts still
dwelt there patiently waiting. And a thought came to him: When Timothy
died--why not? Would it not be almost a duty to preserve this
house--like Carlyle's--and put up a tablet, and show it? "Specimen of
mid-Victorian abode--entrance, one shilling, with catalogue." After
all, it was the completest thing, and perhaps the deadest in the London
of to-day. Perfect in its s