It is a narrow slip of a room, and she sits there and sews, mending the
linen which is old and thin and darning finely the holes in the damask
cloth or the rents which time has made in my grandmother's lace; and
when the light fails her knitting those stockings of fine blue-grey wool
which my grandfather always wears.

Maureen, as often happens with old privileged servants, quarrels with
the other servants and is not much sought after by them. She lives in a
great independence of her own, and has her own cups and saucers; they
are fine old china, with brown sea-shells and seaweed upon them, and
they belonged to the nursery when I was the one child there.

And she has her own tea and bread and butter and sugar; and anything
else she requires she fetches from the kitchen, walking about haughtily
among the other servants, and not staying longer than is necessary to
get what things she requires.

I went very often to Maureen's room.

For one thing, it was like looking into my childhood to go there. It is
so still. The nursery pictures are on the wall, and in a cupboard there
are my discarded books and toys, with others of an earlier date than
mine. There is the dolls' house which was given to my great-grandmother
when she was a child by Lord Kilwarden, that just judge who was a great
friend of our family. It is not so elaborate as the dolls' houses of
to-day, but it is big enough for a small child to creep within it, and
it seemed wonderful to me as it had done to my mother before me, and to
my Aunt Eleanor, who was Theobald's mother. I know my grandmother loves
the dolls' house, and would not consent to its being put away in the
lumber-room.