d.

"No; she never goes there."

"Not now, but if ever she can bear any move it will be her first
change, and I should not like to interfere with her arrangements."

"She could never have been a musician, to let the piano stand
against the wall. I shall never be able to play."

"Perhaps that might be contrived," said Raymond, kindly. "_Here_
you know is your own domain, where you can do as you please."

"Yes; but I am expected to play in the evening. Look at all those
things. I had kept the choicest for the drawing-room, and it is
such a pity to hide them all up here."

Raymond felt for the mortification, and was unwilling to cross her
again, so he said, "I will ask whether my mother would object to
having the piano moved."

"This morning?"

"After eleven o'clock--I never disturb her sooner; but you shall
hear before I go to Backsworth."

"An hour lost," thought Cecil; but she was too well bred to grumble,
and she had her great work to carry on of copying and illustrating
her journal.

Mrs. Poynsett readily consented. "Oh yes, my dear, let her do
whatever she likes. Don't let me be a bugbear. A girl is never at
home till she has had her will of the furniture. I think she will
find that moving out the piano betrays the fading of the rest of the
paper, but that is her affair. She is free to do just as she likes.
I dare say the place does look antediluvian to young eyes."

So Raymond was the bearer of his mother's full permission; and Cecil
presided with great energy over the alterations, which she carried
out by the aid of the younger servants, to the great disgust of
their seniors. She expected the acclamations of her contemporaries;
but it happened that the first of them to cross the room was Julius,
on his way to his mother's room after luncheon, and he, having on a
pair of make-shift glasses, till the right kind could be procured
from London, was unprepared for obstacles in familiar regions,
stumbled over an ottoman, and upset a table with the breakage of a
vase.

He apologized, with much regret; but the younger brothers made an
outcry. "What has come to the place? Here's the table all over
everything!"

"And where are the bronzes?"

"And the humming-birds? Miles's birds, that he brought home after
his first voyage."

"And the clock with the two jolly little Cupids? Don't you remember
Miles and Will Bowater dressing them up for men-of-war's men?
Mother could not bring herself to hav