his will as a family heirloom. There were many other curiosities of
congenial nature and equal value--/quae nunc describere longum est/.
Mr. Leslie was engaged at this time in what is termed "putting things to
rights,"--an occupation he performed with exemplary care once a week.
This was his day; and he had just counted his coins, and was slowly tying
them up again in the brown holland bag, when Frank's knock reached his
ears.

Mr. Maunder Slugge Leslie paused, shook his head as if incredulously, and
was about to resume his occupation, when he was seized with a fit of
yawning which prevented the bag being tied for full two minutes.

While such the employment of the study, let us turn to the recreations in
the drawing-room, or rather parlour. A drawing-room there was on the
first floor, with a charming look-out, not on the dreary fir-trees, but
on the romantic undulating forest-land; but the drawing-room had not been
used since the death of the last Mrs. Leslie. It was deemed too good to
sit in, except when there was company: there never being company, it was
never sat in. Indeed, now the paper was falling off the walls with the
damp, and the rats, mice, and moths--those /"edaces rerum"/--had eaten,
between them, most of the chair-bottoms and a considerable part of the
floor. Therefore, the parlour was the sole general sitting-room; and
being breakfasted in, dined, and supped in, and, after supper, smoked in
by Mr. Leslie to the accompaniment of rum-and-water, it is impossible to
deny that it had what is called "a smell,"--a comfortable, wholesome
family smell, speaking of numbers, meals, and miscellaneous social
habitation. There were two windows: one looked full on the fir-trees;
the other on the farmyard, with the pigsty closing the view. Near the
fir-tree window sat Mrs. Leslie; before her, on a high stool, was a
basket of the children's clothes that wanted mending. A work-table of