The Palace in the Garden

I had forgotten all my shyness now in curiosity. But it was not fated to be satisfied just then. Nurse suddenly interrupted.

"Miss Gussie, dear, you must wait a while to hear all these things from Mrs. Munt. The tea's all ready, and I'm sure you're all hungry. Just run up stairs with Miss Tib to take off your hats, there's a dear. Will you show us the rooms, Mrs. Munt, please?"

So we were all trotted off again – up stairs this time, though it scarcely seemed like going up stairs at all, so broad and shallow were the steps compared with the high-up flights in our London house. And Tib and I were so pleased with the room which Mrs. Munt told us was to be ours, that we should have forgotten all about the talk down stairs if she hadn't made another remark, which put my unanswered question into my head again.

"Yes, it is a nice room," she said, looking round with pleasure at the light-painted furniture and the two white beds side by side, the old-fashioned cupboards in the wall, two of them with glass doors, letting us see a few queer old china cups and teapots inside; "and so little changed, even to its name. We've always called it the young ladies' room."

There it was again – the young ladies; but nurse was listening and evidently fussing to get us down to tea. I must trust to cross-questioning Mrs. Munt some other time.

And the tea was really enough to take up all our attention. There was everything of country things – fresh eggs, and butter and milk of the best, and bread, and tea-cakes, and strawberry jam, and potted fish – all "home-made," of course. I think Mrs. Munt and nurse were really a little frightened to see how much we ate.

After tea we wanted, of course, to go out, but Liddy decided that it was too damp, and Mrs. Munt consoled us by giving us leave to go all over the house, for it was barely six o'clock and quite light. She took us into the front hall and showed us the dining-room, out of which opened the study, and beyond that again, what had been the school-room, and was now grandpapa's bed-room. There was nothing very interesting in these rooms, though they were all quaint and old-fashioned; and through all the house there was the sort of clean, fresh, and yet not new feeling – a mixture of faint old scents that cannot be got away, and wood-fires long ago burnt out, and yet the sweet, pure country air preventing their being musty or stale – that you never notice except in an old country house that has been carefully kept, and yet not really lived in for many years.

And then Mrs. Munt, taking us through the hall again, showed us the door of the drawing-room, and told us we might look at it by ourselves, which we were pleased at.

It was much more interesting, for, though a small room, it was filled with pictures and curiosities. The pictures were mostly miniatures – such queer things some of them were; gentlemen in uniform and the funniest fancy dresses, some with wigs down to their waists, some of them with helmets to make them like Roman soldiers. And ladies to match – some looking dreadfully proud, with towers of hair on the top of their heads, and some simpering in a silly way. One of these last was really rather like Tib when she smiles in what I call her "company" manner – though it's hardly fair to say that now, as she has really left it off – and she was very angry at my saying so, and told me that the most stuck-up-looking one of all was very like me; "and it's better to look silly than to be so horribly proud," she added. We were really rather near quarrelling, which would have been a bad beginning for our life at Rosebuds, when we caught sight of an old cabinet in one corner, of which the top half stood open, showing rows and rows of little drawers, and here and there queer shaped doors opening into inside places, where there were more drawers and shelves. It was a Japanese cabinet, of course – a very old and valuable one. I have never seen one so large and curious, and it quite absorbed our attention till nurse came tapping at the door – I don't know why she tapped; I suppose she had an idea that, as we were in the drawing-room, she must – to tell us it was time, and more than time, to go to bed.

And though I wanted to talk to Tib in bed about the queerness of there having been young ladies

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