l busily talking. Furniture was being carried away: sofas
and chairs, covered for a boudoir in such faint and delicate hues that
in the broad light of day they looked faded. A mirror, framed in
silver, and ornamented with cupids, was leaning against one of the stone
pillars; a jardiniere without flowers, and curtains that bad been taken
down and thrown over a chair, were near by. Several women richly dressed
were talking together of the merits of a crystal chandelier.

Jack, in great astonishment, made his way through the crowd, and could
hardly recognize the well-known rooms, such was their disorder. The
visitors opened the drawers wide, tapped on the wood of the sideboard,
felt of the curtains, and sometimes, as she passed the piano, a lady,
without stopping or removing her gloves, would lightly strike a chord or
two. The child thought himself dreaming. And his mother, where was she?
He went toward her room, but the crowd surged at that moment in the same
direction. The child was too little to see what attracted them, but he
heard the hammer of the auctioneer, and a voice that said,--

"A child's bed, carved and gilded, with curtains!"

And Jack saw his own bed, where he had slept so long, handled by rough
men. He wished to exclaim,

"The bed is mine--my very own--I will not have it touched;" but a
certain feeling of shame withheld him, and he went from room to room
looking for his mother, when suddenly his arm was seized.

"What! Master Jack, are you no longer at the school?"

It was Constant, his mother's maid--Constant, in her Sunday dress,
wearing pink ribbons, and with an air of great importance.

"Where is mamma?" asked the child, in a low voice, a voice that was so
pitiful and troubled that the woman's heart was touched.

"Your mother is not here, my poor child," she said.

"But where is she? And what are all these people doing?"

"They have come for the auction. But come with me to the kitchen, Master
Jack, we can talk better there."

There was quite a party in the kitchen,--the old cook, Augustin, and
several servants in the neighborhood. They were drinking champagne
around the same table where Jack's future had been one evening decided.
The child's arrival made quite a sensation. He was caressed by them all,
for the servants were really attached to his kind-hearted mother. As
he was afraid that they would take him back to the Institute, Jack
took good care not to say that he had run away, and mere