s they saw the players flitting to and fro
between the showers, and the house, and the lawn tennis grounds, that
middle age had privileges that were not to be despised.

The long and lofty drawing-room of Mount Music was a pleasant place
enough, even on this showery day. Some five or six generations of
Talbot-Lowrys had lived in it, and left their marks on it, and though
the indelible hand of Victoria, in youthful vigour, had had, perhaps,
the most perceptible influence on it as a whole, the fancies and
fashions of Major Dick's great-grandmother still held their places. An
ottoman, large as a merry-go-round at a fair, immovable as an island,
occupied, immutably, the space in the centre of the room immediately
under a great cut-glass chandelier. Facing it was the fireplace, an
affair of complicated design, with "Nelson ropes" and knots, and
coils, in worked and twisted brass, and deep hobs, in whose
construction the needs of a punch-kettle had not been forgotten. Above
it, a high, delicately-inlaid marble mantelpiece, brought from Italy
by Dick's great-grandfather, was surmounted by a narrow ledge of
marble, just wide enough to support the base of a Georgian mirror of
flamboyant design, in whose dulled and bluish depths were reflected
the row of old white china birds, that were seated, each on its own
rock, on the shelf in front of it. Family portraits in frames whose
charm of design and colour made atonement for the indifference of the
painting, alternated with brown landscapes in which castles, bridges,
and impenetrable groves were dimly to be discovered through veils of
varnish; flotillas of miniatures had settled, like groups of flies,
wherever on the crowded walls foothold could be found, and
water-colours, pencil-drawings, and photographs, rilled any remaining
space. There were long and implacable sofas, each with its
conventional sofa-table in front of it; Empire _consoles_, with
pieces of china incredibly diverse in style, beauty, and value,
jostling each other on the marble slabs; woolwork screens, worked by
forgotten aunts and grandmothers, chairs of every known breed, and
tables, tables everywhere, and not a corner on one of them on which
anything more could be deposited. The claims of literature were
acknowledged, but without enthusiasm. A tall, glass-fronted cupboard,
inaccessibly placed behind the elongated tail of an early grand piano,
was filled with ornate miniature editions of the classics, that would