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THE rest of the afternoon was left to us in peace and
quietness; that is, in a way: we had no more intruders,
and the taking off seemed to be postponed, but still body
and mind found enough to do and not of the pleasantest.
Our own books and shells must be collected and carried
upstairs, with every article of furniture that was not on Mr.
Pratt's list; while those things that he claimed were as
much as possible brought together and into one part of the
house, that the other rooms might not be overrun. And in
the confiscated furniture all drawers and compartments must
be emptied.

It was rather hard work. Our blank books and papers
had a natural affinity for the desk, and to take Mr. Howard's
out of his and then to bestow them in a pile upstairs,
roused more than sorrow. It was but a few months since
his desk had been put in order by our own hands; the outside
varnished, the inside cleaned and decorated with new
ribbons and cloth. And all for Mr. McLoon's benefit!
Our shells too were generally connecting links among my
father's specimens. We stood long before the ebony cabinet,—
taking up shell after shell, and giving each a careful
examination,—looking once more at the well-known beauties
and peculiarities of Volutes and Argonauts and Stellcridians,—
of the fine Carinaria Vitrea that my father had
been so proud of;—how well we recollected the time when
it was bought! They were all old friends—we seemed to
have some special association with every one.

“Do you remember,” said Kate as she stood holding in

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her hand Mr. Howard's favourite Scalaria, “do you remember
Gracie when papa brought this home?”

“And you had been sick, and he said you should have
the first sight of it—O yes, I remember—how could I forget?
You know he had been so fearful of not getting it—
the man took so long to make up his mind,—and then papa
was so pleased when he had it fairly in the house.”

“What happy children we were then!” said Kate.

“How Stephanie used to vex papa by calling this his
`trap-shell'!”

“She would be sorry for us if she knew all.”

“It's better that she don't,” said Kate—“she has enough
to be sorry for I dare say, or will have. O I wish we could
keep these stone lilies!”

“Have you taken out our harps yet, Katie?”

“No—my harp `par éxcellence' as that man said, must
go. But these poor little harps—”and she pulled out the
drawer.

“I wonder what Mr. McLoon is made of!” said I.

“Hard to tell, Gracie. But I wouldn't change places
with him to-night,—we are a great deal happier than he is.”

“O how much.—And yet one does love the inanimate
things one has grown up among.”—

“One look at you has almost reconciled me to parting
with them,” said Kate smiling. “If you were an Ark or
an Apple snail, Gracie, I should show fight for it. Come
dear, it's no use to look at them any longer,—let us go and
get tea. I believe I have taken out all of ours—O no—
here is Stephanie's old friend, `King Midas.'”

“And this Olive.—That's all, I am sure.”

My father kept himself perfectly quiet during all this;
looked at nothing, and except now and then a sigh or an
expression of patience or impatience, he sat silently reading—
or seeming to read,—the pages not turned over very fast.

And we had tea for the last time at our little table.—

I was fairly tired, hand and heart, and perhaps for that
reason feeling for to-morrow's work; but it was a fatigue
that courted restlessness, not rest. I found myself inclined
to have a leave taking of the furniture,—to seat myself in
the chairs, to look into our old cabinet-desk, to open different
books. Once I lay down on the drawing-room sofa, but

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I grew sad there; and then tried to lose myself in Waverly—
in its scenes of imaginary comfort and discomfort. It
did not rest me. The tears and interest that one can give
to such fiction must come from a mind at ease,—the spring
of a sorrowing heart lies away from its reach; and the
pages I looked at were interlined with our own history.

The morning came,—foggy, threatening, sending down
a few drops now and then to show its intentions, as Mr.
Pratt took away our Holbein to show his. So doubtful
indeed was the weather, that neither sheriff nor assistants
appeared before mid-day, and I half began to hope that
our eyes might have some short reprieve from bare walls.
Meantime Kate and I sat quietly at our copying, having
made the last necessary arrangements and persuaded Mrs.
Howard to keep herself out of the way of all trouble and
confusion.

But the sun came out, and the sheriff came in; and
with him a man into whose charge he was to give the furniture,
and an array of other men to move it. Among them
were several who had formerly worked for us—it looked
strange to see familiar faces about such unfamiliar work;
and wagons of all sorts were clustered as near the house as
the grounds would allow. There were so many hands indeed,
that the work proceeded rapidly. My father with a
sort of tender regard for his old possessions, gave many a
hint as to how they should be moved or packed, and now
and then we were called upon to find some missing article,
or give up some key. On one of these occasions I reached
the drawing-room just in time to take a last look at our
Hebe. The little figure was moved out of its place, and
stood in the full light from the windows with one or two
straggling sunbeams striking across it. I had hardly ever
seen it so pretty, and summoning Kate from her work we
stood and looked at it together. Looked and thought. We
remembered that Hebe almost as long ago as thought went
back—my father had brought her from Italy when we were
little children; and into how many a conversation had she
been wrought—how many a gathering of loved faces had
we seen near her. And now we were to part company.
Yet there she stood with the same graceful attitude, the
same sweet brightness of face, the same joyousness—so

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like what we had been, so unlike what we were now! Kate
went away with full eyes.

We were writing at the large dining-table which was
left us, when my father came in.

“I can't make out which of these upstairs things are to
go”—he said.

“She knows,” said the second receiver peering round
Mr. Howard's shoulder, and indicating me by a motion of
his head—which was “sorely unkempt.”—“She knows—
Why couldn't she come and tell about 'em?”

“It is a good deal of trouble for ladies to take,” said my
father rather sternly.

“O I don't mind the trouble papa—pray let us have no
mistakes made.”

Upstairs I went, through quite an avenue of “unkempt”
heads and extraordinary hats; followed by my father, the
sheriff, the receiver, and several helpers. These last muttered
to each other concerning the beauty or the weight of sundry
articles,—sometimes, I thought, with no favourable allusion
to Mr. McLoon and his proceedings. The sheriff's eye
kept somewhat of the same watch of me that it had done the
day before; while receiver Flagler's look and manner evidently
showed that he considered me as some sort of a vision—
without whose aid it would be impossible to get safely
through the business.

“You say this is the one?—Take it along then—”

It was well I had my father's punctilious notions of
honour.

“Wouldn't you like to have them 'ere green settees left?”
said Mr. Flagler in an interval of directing the helpers.

“The green settees?” said I.

“Well I don' know what they be—them things out in
the garden. Don't you use 'em every day?”

I could not say yes—to my sorrow.

“Not at this season,—in summer we use them a great
deal.”

Mr. Flagler looked sorry too; he wanted to do me a
kindness.

“There is another thing we should like to have left—
very much,” I said. “This large easy-chair in one of the
bedrooms—it is a great comfort in case of sickness, and

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such a thing cannot be borrowed in the country. If you
could leave it for the present—and then if the matter
should not be settled Mr. McLoon can easily send for
it.”—

“I'll leave it!” said the receiver giving the vision an
extraordinary number of nods. “I'll leave it—at a
ventur.”

“Such a thing oughtn't to be took, no how,” said the
sheriff.

“No, no—” said Mr. Flagler. “I'll leave it!”

Once more released, I went back to my writing; but
soon the tea-room door opened and the sheriff and Mr.
Flagler stepped in. The latter looked at us and then at
his list.

“It's put down `four maple-chairs in tea-room'”—he
said. “It's 'most too bad to disturb you! Be them the
ones?”

The four maple-chairs, (which were tea-room extras)
stood there certainly—the only chairs in the room; but
Kate and I immediately quitted the two we had in use, and
informed Mr. Flagler that his list was correct.

“Wouldn't you like to have 'em?” said the sheriff.

“O no”—said Kate smiling; “they may as well go with
the rest. Four chairs cannot make much difference to us.”

The men had no words to answer; and while the chairs
were carried off in silence, I perched myself upon a four-legged
stool, and Kate wheeled in one of the blue easy-chairs
which belonged to us by virtue of inheritance, and
so were out of Mr. McLoon's power.

So wore on the day; and before sundown the last man
of the posse, the last article on the list were out of the
house, and we had gladly locked the doors behind them.
Not because there was much in the house worth coming
for again, but because we wanted some tangible barrier
between us and those clumping steps, rough faces and harsh
voices, with which our eyes and ears had been filled. The
mere thought of any footfall but our own was painful,—our
heads were almost in a whirl. But when the doors were
fast, and Mr. Howard established before a blazing fire in
the kitchen, we went softly about the house to see how it
looked.

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Strange!—strange!—we realized that our drawing-room
had four corners! It had been used to wear a sufficiently
comfortable and well-to-do aspect, but now it might have
been the ground-floor of a barn,—even the scattered wisps
of hay were not wanting. Here was a dark stain in the
place where some old picture or engraving had long greeted
our eyes;—here on the bare floor little indentations marked
the former locality of the ebony cabinet; while on the wall
long dusty cobwebs told what had been for many a year
the background of our univalves and conchifera,—here was
a blank strip of plaster where once had fallen the soft shadow
of our Hebe. Shadowy enough now!—the things we
had grown up among were wafted away into dreamland,—
we should see them no more unless there. Our Hebe!—
it was Mr. McLoon's; and that last stroke of our little
fairy's wand had conjured herself away with the rest. We
almost wondered whether we were not some family of
Smiths, just waked up!

Clearly the first thing was to have tea, with such an infusion
of dinner as our appetites would warrant; and that
over we went to business.

Our sitting-room carpet had been left, because Messrs.
Flagg and Flagler said it might as well be; and this once
swept off we proceeded to test our resources. The halfdozen
despised chairs were placed about the room with as
little stiffness as the circumstances would permit—there
being nothing to diversify them but Mrs. Howard's work-stand
and two odd taborets. Next the two blue chairs
were brought in, and looked astonished to find themselves
in such company, but very comfortable nevertheless. An
escaped lamp stood upon the stand, and before it we
presently set a small dish of late flowers “to make ourselves
feel at home.” The fire burned brightly, and everything
rather surpassed our expectations; but—we had no
table.

“What will you do, dear mamma?” said Kate. “Shall
we take turns in holding the lamp? or shall we eschew
work and be sociable? We never can sit round your work-stand.”

“No,” said Mrs. Howard who had been thinking busily,
“I have a better plan. We will take the little kitchen

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table that holds the water-pail, and make a top to it of that
moulding-board which is too large to use.”

“And the first time papa puts his elbow on it, lamp and
all will go over.”—

“He shall not put his elbow on it till he has screwed the
two parts together. I will have it done at once.”

Done it was, and covered with a cloth, and then our room
was furnished. But there was little else done that evening,
though the lamp stood steady, and the nondescript table
presented a fair field for work. We sat resting. Night
before last at sunset everything was in fair, peaceful order,
with no fear of disturbance; and now—everywhere but in
that room it might as well have been an auctioneer's domain
as ours. “Well”—as we all said when the subject
was mentioned; but it took us long to get used to the
change, and frequently we said “where is such a thing?—
O—those people have got it!”

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