three great decanters with silver labels chained round their necks,
which had always been the companions of the tea-service in her aunt's
lifetime. From the little closets in the sideboard there came a most
significant odor of cake and wine whenever one opened the doors. We used
Miss Brandon's beautiful old blue India china which she had given to
Kate, and which had been carefully packed all winter. Kate sat at the
head and I at the foot of the round table, and I must confess that we
were apt to have either a feast or a famine, for at first we often
forgot to provide our dinners. If this were the case Maggie was sure to
serve us with most derisive elegance, and make us wait for as much
ceremony as she thought necessary for one of Mrs. Lancaster's
dinner-parties.

The west parlor was our favorite room down stairs. It had a great
fireplace framed in blue and white Dutch tiles which ingeniously and
instructively represented the careers of the good and the bad man; the
starting-place of each being a very singular cradle in the centre at the
top. The last two of the series are very high art: a great coffin stands
in the foreground of each, and the virtuous man is being led off by two
disagreeable-looking angels, while the wicked one is hastening from an
indescribable but unpleasant assemblage of claws and horns and eyes
which is rapidly advancing from the distance, open-mouthed, and bringing
a chain with it.

There was a large cabinet holding all the small curiosities and
knick-knacks there seemed to be no other place for,--odd china figures
and cups and vases, unaccountable Chinese carvings and exquisite corals
and sea-shells, minerals and Swiss wood-work, and articles of _vertu_
from the South Seas. Underneath were stored boxes of letters and old
magazines; for this was one of the houses where nothing seems to have