s it
was with objects needed for its many different uses, it was always kept
in a state of the most scrupulous order and instant disaster followed
any attempt as a disarrangement.

It was a whole world by itself, full of interesting things for a small
boy to puzzle over. It was also a world in evolution. Every so often a
piece of furniture would disappear and a better one take its place, to
be studied and admired and tried out again and again. Back of every
improvement lay a unifying ambition. Its key-word was mahogany. The
superior social respectability of this wood could not be disputed, and
it had a sort of natural dignity that harmonized with the father's solid
taste--though the mother might have preferred something lighter and
brighter. And a microcosm of mahogany might, after all, be worth living
for when loftier illusions had gone on the scrap heap.

Practically everything in the room had a history as well as a special
place. There was the main chest of drawers, for instance, known as
"mamma's bureau" and placed near one of the windows, where a good light
fell on the swinging mirror forming a separate piece on top of it. A
journeyman carpenter had made that chest to prove himself a master of
his trade under the old gild rules. Then he put it up at lottery to
raise money with which to open a shop of his own. Keith's father bought
a lot while still engaged, and won the prize which became the chief
wedding present of his bride--to be cherished above all other objects to
her dying day.

It was really a fine piece of work, of mahogany, with daintily carved
and twisted columns along the front corners, and so highly polished that
Keith could see his own face in the rich brown glimmer of its surfaces.
It had four drawers. The three lower ones were divided between the
parents and held all sorts of things, from shirts and socks to mother's
mahogany yard stick, which had a turned handle and a tapering blade that
made it pass excellent muster as a sword. The top drawer could only be
pulled out halfway, but then the front of it came down and it changed
into a writing desk, with an intriguing array of small drawers and
pigeonholes at the back of it, and a suspicion of alluring and
unattainable treasures in every separate receptacle. To ransack all of
these was Keith's most audacious dream, but when the dream came true at
last, it was fraught with no ecstasy of realization, for he was a
middle-aged man, and in the room behin