e young ladies' names,--unless, that is to say, you'd
rather sit in the parlour?"

"We would rather sit in the parlour, Miss Bender," said Bertha, quickly,
and as if fearing her hostess might not follow up her suggestion, Bertha
opened a door leading to the front hall, and started toward the parlour,
herself.

"Well," said Miss Bender, with a note of regret in her voice, "I s'pose
if you must, you must; though for my part, I'm free to confess that this
room's a heap more cozy and livable."

"That may be," said Bertha, who had beckoned to the girls to follow
quickly, "but my friends are from the city, as you suspected, and they
don't often have a chance in New York to see a parlour like yours, Miss
Bender."

As Bertha had intended, this bit of flattery mollified the old lady, and
she followed her guests along the dark hall.

"Well, if you're bound to have it so," she said, "do wait a minute, and
let me get in there and pull up the blinds. It's darker than Japhet's
coat pocket. I haven't had this room opened since Mis' Perkins across the
road had her last tea fight. And I only did it then, 'cause I wanted to
set some vases of my early primroses in the windows, so's the guests
might see 'em as they came by. Seems to me it's a little musty in here,
but land! a room will get musty if it's shut up, and what earthly good is
a parlour except to keep shut up?"

As Miss Bender talked, she had bustled about, and thrown open the six
windows of the large room, into which Bertha had taken the girls.

The sunlight streamed in, and disclosed a scene which seemed to Patty
like a wonderful vision of a century ago.

And indeed for more than a hundred years the furniture of the great
parlour had stood precisely as they now saw it.

The furniture was entirely of antique mahogany, and included sofas and
chairs, various kinds of tables, bookcases, a highboy, a lowboy and other
pieces of furniture of which Patty knew neither the name nor the use.

The pictures on the wall, the ornaments, the books and the old-fashioned
brass candlesticks were all of the same ancient period, and Patty felt as
if she had been transported back into the life of her great-grandmother.

As she had herself a pretty good knowledge of the styles and varieties of
antique furniture, she won Miss Bender's heart at once by her
appreciation of her Heppelwhite chairs and her Chippendale card-tables.

"You don't say," said Miss Bender, looking at Patty in admirat