The high chimney-piece is en rapport with all the rest, and scowls unceasingly; and the very windows—long and deep—have little faces carved on either side of them, of the most diabolical.
Miss Peyton is plainly entranced with the whole scene, and for a full minute says nothing.
"I feel as though I were a child again," she says, presently, as though half regretful. "Everything comes back to me with such a strange yet tender vividness. This, I remember, was my favorite table, this my favorite chair. And that little winged monster over there, he used to whisper in my ears more thrilling tales than either Grimm or Andersen. Have you never moved anything in all these years?"
"Never. It is your own room by adoption, and no one shall meddle with it. When I went abroad I locked it, and carried the key of it with me wherever I went; I hardly know why myself." He glances at her curiously, but her face is averted, and she is plainly thinking less of him than of the many odd trifles scattered around. "When I returned, dust reigned, and spiders; but it has been made spick and span to day for its mistress. Does it still please you? or will you care to alter anything?"
"No, nothing. I shall pay a compliment to my childish taste by letting everything stay just as it is. I must have been rather a nice child, Jim, don't you think? if one passes over the torn frocks and the shrewish tongue."
"I don't think I ever saw a tear in your frocks," says Sir James, simply, "and if your tongue was shrewish I never found it out."
Miss Peyton gives way to mirth. She sits down on a wretchedly uncomfortable, if delightfully mediæval, chair and laughs a good deal.
"Oh, wad some power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as others see us!"
she quotes, gayly. "Those lines, meant by poor Burns as a censure on frail humanity, rather fall short at this moment. Were I to see myself as you see me, Jim, I should be a dreadfully conceited person, and utterly unbearable What a good friend you make!"
"A bad one, you mean. A real friend, according to my lights, is a fellow who says unpleasant things all round and expects you to respect his candor. By and by, when I tell you a few home truths, perhaps you will not like me as you do now."