lugubrious face no longer overlooked us as we packed books and china.
Carrie and mother and Dot were cozily established in the little
sea-side lodging, and only Allan, Jack, and I sat down to our meals
in the dismantled rooms.

It was hard work trying to keep cheerful, when Allan left off
whistling, as he hammered at the heavy cases, and when Jack was
discovered sobbing in odd corners, with Smudge in her arms--of course
Smudge would accompany us to Milnthorpe; no one could imagine Jack
without her favorite sable attendant, and then Dot was devoted to
him. Jack used to come to us with piteous pleadings to take first one
and then another of her pets; now it was the lame chicken she had
nursed in a little basket by the kitchen fire, then a pair of guinea
pigs that belonged to Dot, and some carrier pigeons that they
specially fancied; after that, she was bent on the removal of a young
family of hedgehogs, and some kittens that had been discovered in the
hay-loft, belonging to the stable cat.

We made a compromise at last, and entrusted to her care Carrie's
tame canaries, and a cage of dormice that belonged to Dot, in whose
fate Smudge look a vast amount of interest, though he never ventured
to look at the canaries. The care of these interesting captives was
consolatory to Jack, though she rained tears over them in secret, and
was overheard by Allan telling them between her sobs that "they were
all going to live in a little pokey house, without chickens or cows,
or anything that would make life pleasant, and that she and they must
never expect to be happy again." Ah, well! the longest day must have
an end, and by-and-by the evening came when we turned away from dear
old Combe Manor forever.