ne of Puritanic primness. And the chairs, silent
friends that are so companionable when an understanding hand places
them in position, were now facing at stiff angles of armed neutrality,
as if mutually suspicious. Not one of them said, "Sit in me."

But the worst was yet to come. Walking over to the fireplace, the Man
Above the Square looked in and groaned.

"She's done it again!" he cried. "I'd move out of this flat to-night
if I wasn't sure that any other would be as bad, this side of the
middle of last century."

It was, indeed, a sorry piece of work. The splendid pile of gray and
white wood ashes which that morning had been heaped high over the arms
of the firedogs, and which drifted high into each corner and out upon
the hearth, was no more. A little pile remained, carefully swept into
the rear of the fireplace, but the bulk of the ashes had been removed
and the arms of the firedogs stood inches above what was left.

"I told her not to do it; confound it! I told her not to do it!" he
muttered aloud, storming about the room. "Here I've been since
Christmas collecting that pile of ashes, and it had just reached the
point where I could kindle a fire with three sticks of kindling and
burn only one log if I wished. And then that confounded chambermaid
disobeys me--distinctly disobeys me--and shovels it all out!"

He rang angrily for the chambermaid, whose name was Eliza, and who was
tall and angular.

"Didn't I tell you under no consideration to take away any of my
ashes?" he demanded.

"But I swept the room into them, and they got all dirty," she
protested.

"Then don't sweep the room again!" he interposed. "I want the ashes
left hereafter."

"But the fire will burn better without so many ashes; they chokes it,"
said Eliza. "Most people like 'em cleaned out every week."

"Most people are fools," said the Man Above the Square. "You may go
now."

The loss of his ashes had so irritated him that it was a long time
before he could yield himself to the influence of the blaze, which
leapt merrily enough, in spite of the too clear hearth. He filled his
pipe and smoked it out and filled it again; he tried the latest
autobiography and Heine's prose and the current magazines; and still
his mind would not settle to restfulness and content. Then suddenly
he remembered the date, the 20th of January. He took down his Keats.
The owl, for all his feathers, might well have been a-cold on that
night, too, for a shrill win