his curios. As they passed along
the corridor on the second floor, he paused a moment outside a room
which was closed. Then as if on a sudden impulse, he took a key out of
his pocket, and opened the door, without saying anything. It was a
small room, rather bare, furnished with an almost Spartan simplicity;
the sunlight beamed in, striking its full, red rays on the faded wall
above the narrow, white iron bed, over which hung a picture of a
lion-hunt, evidently cut out of some book or magazine--just such a
picture as would strike the imagination of a lad of twelve. The rest
of the wall was mottled with other pictures, many of them unframed,
clipped out of colored newspapers, and fixed to the wall-paper with
pins; pictures of horses and steeple-chases, and Greek athletes, and
American heroes; one, the largest, was a vivid representation of the
Battle of Trafalgar, showing a perfect inferno of red and yellow flames
and bursting bombs, and splintered ships, and drowning sailors clinging
to planks and spars. On the table between the windows stood a row of
books, a few ill-treated looking lesson books hobnobbing like poor
relations with other more self-confident works on "Woodcraft" and
"Adventure." The mantelpiece was burdened with a heterogeneous
collection of boyish knickknacks, such as a sling, a bird's-nest, a
rusty bowie-knife, and a decrepit old horse-pistol.

For a moment Nancy looked about her in astonishment, then, as she
understood, the tears came to her eyes, and she looked up at her uncle.
The room had not been changed since her father had left it for
boarding-school, twenty, thirty years before. Mr. Prescott said
nothing; but after a moment closed the door, locked it again, and
walked away.

"I'm going to have visitors for tea," he remarked, to turn the subject.
"It's quite an eventful day for me; I rarely see anyone, as you know.
But I thought that it might be pleasant for you to renew an
acquaintance with a lady who seems to have taken a great fancy to you,
and who, incidentally, is the only woman I know who has a full-sized
allowance of common sense. Though at times she is very unreasonable
and quite as inconsistent as any of her sex."

Nancy looked at him inquiringly, and he explained:

"Miss Elizabeth Bancroft." Whether he considered Miss Bancroft in the
plural, as being a lady of many parts, or whether he had used the word
"visitors" because she would be accompanied or followed by others, and