heavy bronze statues of Grecian women holding aloft four-branched candlesticks that were never lighted.

There was never a fire nowadays in this fireplace, which was indeed a good twenty-five feet from the table, and must have burned for half a day in winter weather to make any impression upon the diners. Sometimes in January Flora would have an oil stove lighted in here during meals; usually she ate shuddering and rubbing her cold fingers dryly upon each other between courses, and escaped as soon as possible to the heavy warmth of the upstairs sitting room again.

Over the square walnut table hung a heavy lamp upon adjustable tarnished chains. Upon a walnut table in a corner stood the large birdcage, empty now, but where once Roger had kept the two green talkative parrots that had been one of the joys of David’s childhood and Tom’s.

“Here, open that cage, Katy—Addie—one of you!” David could remember his stepfather saying, when it was time for dessert. “Come here, Cassie-girl—come here, old Sultan!” And out would come the chuckling and murmuring birds, with the unearthly green of their feathers turned upside down or swept sideways as they[32] sidled and climbed their way to their master’s shoulders. How often had David seen his stepfather, whom he so passionately admired, composedly eating his fruit and his cheese, with one small jade body mincing on his shoulder and the other weaving its way down his busy arm!

[32]

Gabrielle asked an occasional question or two to-night as the meal progressed; David—never an easy talker—did his best to keep the conversation moving. But Flora’s heavy silences were too much for both, and in the end it was a quiet meal. The wind outside whined and whispered at the closed shutters, shutters that, Gabrielle knew, gave upon a very jungle of heavy shrubbery on the northern and eastern fronts of the lower floor. Now and then an unused door, in some distant unused room, banged sullenly and was still.

Afterward they went back to their places beside the fire again, but in pure charity David presently suggested that the traveller be sent to bed. The warmth, the food, the quiet, and her fatigue were causing her an absolute torture of sleepiness; she held her eyes open with an effort, and answered her aunt’s questions with sudden stares and starts, smiling nervously as she roused herself to a full realization of where she was and what she was saying.

“Yes, go to bed,” said Flora, knitting. “And—sleep late 

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