uncertain season were snarling in the chimneys, and drops of rain spat
themselves into the fire, revealing plainly that the young man's room was
not far enough from the top of the house to admit of a twist in the flue,
and revealing darkly a little more, if that social rule-of-three inverse,
the higher in lodgings the lower in pocket, were applicable here.
However, the aspect of the room, though homely, was cheerful, a somewhat
contradictory group of furniture suggesting that the collection consisted
of waifs and strays from a former home, the grimy faces of the old
articles exercising a curious and subduing effect on the bright faces of
the new. An oval mirror of rococo workmanship, and a heavy cabinet-piano
with a cornice like that of an Egyptian temple, adjoined a harmonium of
yesterday, and a harp that was almost as new. Printed music of the last
century, and manuscript music of the previous evening, lay there in such
quantity as to endanger the tidiness of a retreat which was indeed only
saved from a chronic state of litter by a pair of hands that sometimes
played, with the lightness of breezes, about the sewing-machine standing
in a remote corner--if any corner could be called remote in a room so
small.

Fire lights and shades from the shaking flames struck in a butterfly
flutter on the underparts of the mantelshelf, and upon the reader's cheek
as he sat. Presently, and all at once, a much greater intentness
pervaded his face: he turned back again, and read anew the subject that
had arrested his eyes. He was a man whose countenance varied with his
mood, though it kept somewhat in the rear of that mood. He looked sad
when he felt almost serene, and only serene when he felt quite cheerful.
It is a habit people acquire who have had repressing experiences.

A faint smile and flush now lightened his face, and jumping up he opened
the door and exclaimed, 'Faith! will you come here for a moment?'