d him his mother lay dead....

The mirror was flanked by two small square mahogany boxes, one holding
medicines and the other tobacco. Little mats, some crocheted and some
wonderfully composed of differently coloured glass beads, were used to
protect the boxes as well as the top of the bureau from being
scratched, and on them stood several small groups and figures of
porcelain. One of these was Keith's special favourite and his first
introduction to that world where beauty takes precedence of goodness and
truth. It showed a lady and a gentleman in dresses of a colour and cut
wholly unlike anything seen by Keith on the real persons coming within
his ken. They were seated on a richly ornamented sofa before a tea
table, and there was something about the manner in which they looked at
each other that spoke more loudly than their bright costumes of things
lying beyond ordinary existence.

There was also a nice little girl with a doll viewing herself
complacently in a real mirror, and a lady in bloomers, apparently of
Oriental pattern, who rowed a boat hardly larger than herself, that was
raised almost on end by terrific waves. All three groups had this in
common, that when you removed the ornamental upper part, a previously
unsuspected inkstand was revealed. There was a period when Keith
seriously believed that all specimens of the keramic art were inkstands
in disguise.

Art not represented on the bureau alone, however. The walls contained a
number of steel engravings in gilt frames, quaint old coloured prints,
family photographs, and pink-coloured reliefs of various Swedish kings
made out of wax and mounted under convex glass panes on highly polished
black boards. But all of those objects were flat and distant and
colourless in comparison with the things on the bureau that could be
touched as well as seen. As for the group with the lady and the
gentlemen, it had only one rival in the boy's mind, and that was the
big clock in a wooden case that hung on the wall between the windows
over the dining table. The hide-and-seek of the restless pendulum with
its shining brass disc was a constant source of fascination in itself,
and so were the strange operations performed by the father in front of
the clock every Sunday morning, when diversions were particularly
welcome on account of the extra restrictions on play. But its main charm
rested in the strangely pleasing sounds it produced every so often,
preceded by a funny rattle t