the various
articles of furniture and the arrangement of them. Good sense was
regarded too. Camp chairs and tables were useful for packing and
moving, as well as neat to the eye; white draperies relieved their
simplicity; shelves were hung against the wall in one place for books,
and filled; and in the floor stood an easy chair of excellent
workmanship, into which Mr. Rhys immediately put Eleanor. But she
started up to look at it.

"Did aunt Caxton send all these things?" she said with a tear in her
eye.

"She has sent almost too many. These are but the beginning, Look here,
Eleanor."

He opened a door at one end of the room, hidden under mat hangings like
the other, which disclosed a large space lined with shelves; several
articles reposing on them, and on the floor below sundry chests and
boxes.

"This is your storeroom. Here you may revel in the riches you do not
immediately wish to display. This is yours; I have a storeroom on my
own part."

"And what is in those chests and boxes, Mr. Rhys?"

"I don't know! except that it is aunt Caxton again. You will find
tablecloths and napkins--I can certify that--for I stumbled upon them;
but I thought they had best not see the light till their owner came. So
I locked them up--and here are the keys."

"And who put up all these nice shelves?"

"Your head carpenter."

"And have you been doing all this for me?" said Eleanor.

He laughed and took her in his arms again, looking at her with that
mixture of expressions.

"I wish I could give you some of my content!" he said.

"I do not want it!" said Eleanor laughing.

"Is that declaration entirely generous?"

Eleanor had no mind, like a wise woman, to answer this question; but
she was held under the inspection of an eye that she knew of old clear
and keen beyond all others to untie the knot of anybody's meaning. She
flushed up very much and tried to turn it off, for she saw he had a
mind to have the answer.

"You do not want me to give account of every idle word after that
fashion?" she said lightly.

"Hush--hush," he said, with a gravity that had much sweetness in it. "I
cannot have you speak in that way."

"I will not--" said Eleanor, suddenly much more sober than he was.

"There are too many that have the habit of using their Master's words
to point their own sentences. Do not let us use it. Come to my
study--you did not see it before dinner, I think."

Eleanor was glad he could smile again, for at that