A soft rather shaky sort of tap at the door. It does not all at once
reach the rather deaf ears of the little old lady and tall, still older
gentleman who are seated in their usual arm-chairs, one with his
newspaper by the window, the other with her netting by the fire, in the
exceedingly neat--neat, indeed, is no word for it--"parlour" of Arbitt
Lodge. In what part of the country this queerly-named house was--is
still, perhaps--to be found there is no particular reason for telling;
whence came this same queer name will be told in good time. The parlour
suited _its_ name anyway better far than it would that of
"drawing-room," which would be given it nowadays. There was a round
table in the middle; there were high-backed mahogany chairs against the
wall, polished by age and careful rubbing to that stage of dark
shininess which makes even mahogany pleasant to the eye, and with seats
of flowering silk damask whose texture must have been _very_ good to be
so faded without being worn; there were spindle-legged side-tables
holding inlaid "papier-maché" desks and rose-wood work-boxes, and two or
three carved cedar or sandal-wood cases of various shapes. And, most
tempting of all to my mind, there were glass-doored cupboards in the
wall, with great treasures of handleless teacups and very fat teapots,
not to speak of bowls and jugs of every form and size; and everything,
from the Indian box with the ivory chessmen to the china Turk with his
long pipe of green spun-glass, sitting cross-legged on the high
mantelpiece between a very sentimental lady and gentleman, also of
china, who occupied its two ends,--_everything_ was exactly and
precisely in its own place, in what had been its own place ever since
the day, now more than thirty years ago, when Grandpapa, the tall old
gentleman, had retired from the army on half-pay and come to settle down
at Arbitt Lodge for the rest of his life with Grandmamma and their son