exceedingly fine lady, with grown-up children, with very young children
also, with ayahs, with native servants, with English servants, with a
list of acquaintances such as one may read of in the papers the day
after a Queen's drawing-room, took possession of the Uninhabited House,
and, for about three months, peace reigned in our dominions.

Buckingham Street, as represented by us, stank in the nostrils of no
human being.

So far we were innocent of offence, we were simply ordinary solicitors
and clerks, doing as fully and truly as we knew how, an extremely good
business at rates which yielded a very fair return to our principal.

The Colonel was delighted with the place, he kindly called to say; so
was Mrs. Morris; so were the grown-up sons and daughters of Colonel and
Mrs. Morris; and so, it is to be presumed, were the infant branches of
the family.

The native servants liked the place because Mr. Elmsdale, in view of his
wife's delicate health, had made the house "like an oven," to quote Miss
Blake. "It was bad for her, I know," proceeded that lady, "but she would
have her own way, poor soul, and he--well, he'd have had the top brick
of the chimney of a ten-story house off, if she had taken a fancy for
that article."

Those stoves and pipes were a great bait to Colonel Morris, as well as a
source of physical enjoyment to his servants.

He, too, had married a woman who was not always easy to please; but
River Hall did please her, as was natural, with its luxuries of heat,