eave the 'ouse, too, sir," said the butler.
"A nice place, but too big for them."

"Haven't they any children?" Norah asked.

"Only the Captain, miss, and he's in Mesopotamia, which is an 'orrible
'ole for any gentleman to be stuck in," said the butler with a fine
contempt for Mesopotamia and all its works. "And the mistress is
tired of 'ousekeeping, so they're going to live in one of them there
family 'otels, as they call them." The butler sighed, and then, as if
conscious of having lapsed from correct behaviour, stiffened to
rigidity and became merely butler once more. "Will you see the 'ouse
now, sir?"

They entered a wide hall in which was a fireplace that drew an
exclamation from Norah, since she had not seen so large a one since
she left Billabong. This was built to take logs four feet long, to
hold which massive iron dogs stood in readiness. Big leather
armchairs and couches and tables strewn with magazines and papers,
together with a faint fragrance of tobacco in the air, gave to the
hall a comforting sense of use. The drawing-room, on the other hand,
was chillingly splendid and formal, and looked as though no one had
ever sat in the brocaded chairs: and the great dining room was almost
as forbidding. The butler intimated that the General and his wife
preferred the morning-room, which proved to be a cheery place, facing
south and west, with a great window-recess filled with flowering
plants.

"This is jolly," Jim said. "But so would the other rooms be, if they
weren't so awfully empty. They only want people in them."

"Tired people," Norah said.

"Yes," Wally put in. "I'm blessed if I think they would stay tired
for long, here."

There was a long billiard-room, with a ghostly table shrouded in
dust-sheets; and upstairs, a range of bedrooms of all shapes and
sizes, but all bright and cheerful, and looking out upon different
aspects of park and woodland. Nothing was out of order; everything
was plain, but care and taste were evident in each detail. Then, down
a back staircase, they penetrated to outer regions where the corner of
Norah's soul that Brownie had made housewifely rejoiced over a big,
bright kitchen with pantries and larders and sculleries of the most
modern type. The cook, who looked severe, was reading the _Daily
Mail_ in the servants' hall; here and there they had glimpses of smart
maids, irreproachably clad, who seemed of a race apart from either the
cheery, friendly housemaid