flowers carved in wood; with an oaken floor, a well-worn Turkey carpet,
and dark mahogany furniture, all of which had seen service and polish
under Pebbleson Nephew. The great sideboard had assisted at many
business-dinners given by Pebbleson Nephew to their connection, on the
principle of throwing sprats overboard to catch whales; and Pebbleson
Nephew's comprehensive three-sided plate-warmer, made to fit the whole
front of the large fireplace, kept watch beneath it over a sarcophagus-
shaped cellaret that had in its time held many a dozen of Pebbleson
Nephew's wine. But the little rubicund old bachelor with a pigtail,
whose portrait was over the sideboard (and who could easily be identified
as decidedly Pebbleson and decidedly not Nephew), had retired into
another sarcophagus, and the plate-warmer had grown as cold as he. So,
the golden and black griffins that supported the candelabra, with black
balls in their mouths at the end of gilded chains, looked as if in their
old age they had lost all heart for playing at ball, and were dolefully
exhibiting their chains in the Missionary line of inquiry, whether they
had not earned emancipation by this time, and were not griffins and
brothers.

Such a Columbus of a morning was the summer morning, that it discovered
Cripple Corner. The light and warmth pierced in at the open windows, and
irradiated the picture of a lady hanging over the chimney-piece, the only
other decoration of the walls.

"My mother at five-and-twenty," said Mr. Wilding to himself, as his eyes
enthusiastically followed the light to the portrait's face, "I hang up
here, in order that visitors may admire my mother in the bloom of her
youth and beauty. My mother at fifty I hang in the seclusion of my own
chamber, as a remembrance sacred to me. O! It's you, Jarvis!"