dly eat, for feasting her eyes. And when they went
up-stairs to their rooms that feast still continued. The house was
irregular, with rather small rooms and low ceilings; which itself was
pleasant after the more commonplace regularity to which Miss Frere had
been accustomed; and then it was full--all the rooms were full--of
quaintness and beauty. Oak wainscottings, dark with time; oaken
doorways with singular carvings; chimney-pieces, before which Betty
stood in speechless delight and admiration; small-paned windows set in
deep window niches; in one or two rooms dark draperies; but the late
Mr. Strahan had not favoured anything that shut out the light, and in
most of the house there were no curtains put up. And then, on the
walls, in cupboards and presses, on tables and shelves, and in
cabinets, there was an endless variety and wealth of treasures and
curiosities. Pictures, bronzes, coins, old armour, old weapons,
curiosities of historical value, others of natural production, others,
still, of art; some of all these were very valuable and precious. To
examine them must be the work of many days; it was merely the fact of
their being there which Betty took in now, with a sense of the great
riches of the new mental pasture-ground in which she found herself. She
changed her dress in a kind of breathless mood; noticing as she did so
the old-fashioned and aged furniture of her room. Aged, not infirm; the
manufacture solid and strong as ever; the wood darkened by time, the
patterns quaint, but to Betty's eye the more picturesque. Her apartment
was a corner room, with one deep window on each of two sides; the
look-out over a sunny landscape of grass, trees, and scattered
buildings. On another side was a deep chimney-place, with curious
wrought-iron fire-dogs. What a delightful adventure--or what a terrible
adventure--was it which had brought her to this house! She would not
think of that; she dressed and went down.

The rest of the party were gathered in the library, and this room
finished Betty's enchantment. It was a well-sized room, the largest in
the house, on the second floor; and all the properties that made the
house generally interesting were gathered and culminated here. Dark
wainscotting, dark bookcases, and dark books, gave it an aspect that
might have been gloomy, yet was not so; perhaps because of the many
other objects in the room, which gave points of light or bits of
colour. What they were, Betty could only find