to the last against being compelled to sleep in a bed, because it was a
modern conventionality, out of all harmony with her place of residence
and her friend in armor.

Fortunately for the repose of Morgan, who, under other circumstances,
would have discovered on the very first day that his airy retreat was
by no means high enough to place him out of Jessie's reach, the idea of
settling herself instantly in her new habitation excluded every other
idea from the mind of our fair guest. She pinned up the nankeen-colored
traveling dress in festoons all round her on the spot; informed us that
we were now about to make acquaintance with her in the new character
of a woman of business; and darted downstairs in mad high spirits,
screaming for Matilda and the trunks like a child for a set of new toys.
The wholesome protest of Nature against the artificial restraints of
modern life expressed itself in all that she said and in all that she
did. She had never known what it was to be happy before, because she had
never been allowed, until now, to do anything for herself. She was down
on her knees at one moment, blowing the fire, and telling us that she
felt like Cinderella; she was up on a table the next, attacking the
cobwebs with a long broom, and wishing she had been born a housemaid. As
for my unfortunate friend, the upholsterer, he was leveled to the ranks
at the first effort he made to assume the command of the domestic forces
in the furniture department. She laughed at him, pushed him about,
disputed all his conclusions, altered all his arrangements, and ended by
ordering half his bedroom furniture to be taken back again, for the one
unanswerable reason that she meant to do without it.

As evening approached, the scene presented by the two rooms became
eccentric to a pitch of absurdity which is quite indescribable.
The grim, ancient walls of the bedroom had the liveliest modern
dressing-gowns and morning-wrappers hanging all about them. The man in
armor had a collection of smart little boots and shoes dangling by laces
and ribbons round his iron legs. A worm-eaten, steel-clasped casket,
dragged out of a corner, frowned on the upholsterer's brand-new
toilet-table, and held a miscellaneous assortment of combs, hairpins,
and brushes. Here stood a gloomy antique chair, the patriarch of its
tribe, whose arms of blackened oak embraced a pair of pert, new deal
bonnet-boxes not a fortnight old. There, thrown down lightly on a rugged