The Palace in the Garden. Molesworth Mrs.

kept, and yet not really lived in for many years.

      And then Mrs. Munt, taking us through the hall again, showed us the door of the drawing-room, and told us we might look at it by ourselves, which we were pleased at.

      It was much more interesting, for, though a small room, it was filled with pictures and curiosities. The pictures were mostly miniatures – such queer things some of them were; gentlemen in uniform and the funniest fancy dresses, some with wigs down to their waists, some of them with helmets to make them like Roman soldiers. And ladies to match – some looking dreadfully proud, with towers of hair on the top of their heads, and some simpering in a silly way. One of these last was really rather like Tib when she smiles in what I call her "company" manner – though it's hardly fair to say that now, as she has really left it off – and she was very angry at my saying so, and told me that the most stuck-up-looking one of all was very like me; "and it's better to look silly than to be so horribly proud," she added. We were really rather near quarrelling, which would have been a bad beginning for our life at Rosebuds, when we caught sight of an old cabinet in one corner, of which the top half stood open, showing rows and rows of little drawers, and here and there queer shaped doors opening into inside places, where there were more drawers and shelves. It was a Japanese cabinet, of course – a very old and valuable one. I have never seen one so large and curious, and it quite absorbed our attention till nurse came tapping at the door – I don't know why she tapped; I suppose she had an idea that, as we were in the drawing-room, she must – to tell us it was time, and more than time, to go to bed.

      And though I wanted to talk to Tib in bed about the queerness of there having been young ladies long ago in this very room, and that Mrs. Munt evidently didn't want to tell us about them, I was so sleepy, and so was Tib, that our conversation got no further than, "Tib, don't you think – " and a very indistinct murmur of "Yes, Gussie, of course I do," before we were both fast asleep and —