t-nursery he waited a moment to
listen. Was she snoozling among her blankets?--the darling! She still
sucked her thumb, sometimes, poor baby, to send her to sleep, and it was
another reason for discontent with Miss Farmer that she would make a
misdemeanour of it. Really, that woman got on his nerves!

Beyond the nursery he had no knowledge whatever of his own house. The
attics at Heston were large and rambling. He believed the servants were
all in the other wing, but was not sure; he could only hope that he
might not stumble on some handmaiden's room by mistake!

A door to the right, at the end of the passage. He tried the key. Thank
goodness! It turned without too much noise, and he found himself on the
threshold of a big lumber-room, his candle throwing lines of dusty light
across it. He closed the door, set down the light, and looked round him
in despair. The room was crowded with furniture, trunks, and boxes, in
considerable confusion. It looked as though the men employed to move
them had piled them there as they pleased; and Roger shrewdly suspected
that his mother, from whom, in spite of her square and business-like
appearance, his own indolence was inherited, had shrunk till now from
the task of disturbing them.

He began to rummage a little. Papers belonging to his father--an endless
series of them; some in tin boxes marked with the names of various
companies, mining and other; some in leather cases, reminiscent of
politics, and labelled "Parliamentary" or "Local Government Board."
Trunks containing Court suits, yeomanry uniforms, and the like; a medley
of old account books, photographs, worthless volumes, and broken
ornaments: all the refuse that our too complex life piles about us was
represented in the chaos of the room. Roger pulled and pushed as
cautiously as he could, but making, inevitably, some noise in the
process. At last! He caught sight of some belongings of his own and was
soon joyfully detaching the old Eton desk, of which he was in search,
from a pile of miscellaneous rubbish. In doing so, to his dismay, he
upset a couple of old cardboard boxes filled with letters, and they fell
with some clatter. He looked round instinctively at the door; but it was
shut, and the house was well built, the walls and ceilings reasonably
sound-proof. The desk was only latched--beastly carelessness, of
course!--and inside it were three thick piles of letters, and a few
loose ones below. His own letters to Chloe; an