So struck was Leigh by this picture, and by the fact that his hope of meeting again the goddess of the maple walk was about to be realized, that Cardington was well on his way up the stairs before he hurried in pursuit. Unawake himself to modern art tendencies, he felt, without conscious reflection or comparison, the old-fashioned appearance of the house. The severe, dark paper on the wall, the steel engravings that had hung for years untouched, were evidently as the bishop's wife, or as one belonging to a still earlier generation, had placed them. They proclaimed a reverence for old associations, or the indifference of an unmarried daughter to the artistic possibilities of a house that was not of her own choosing.
The room into which they entered appeared to be the bishop's own, or a guest chamber. At least, there was no suggestion of the feminine in the furniture, or in the ecclesiastical pictures that adorned the walls. Even the military brushes on the bureau possessed an episcopal dignity of size and weight, and the two tall candles in their massive silver candlesticks glimmered like altar lights.
"There's plenty of atmosphere in this place," Leigh remarked, as he stood before the mirror and applied the brushes to his hair, which, because of its thickness, was invariably disordered by the lifting of his hat. "I mean atmosphere in the modern fictional sense. It seems to me I saw a duplicate of that four-posted monstrosity of a bed at the Exposition this summer."
"I love to come in contact with the fresh, unprejudiced view of the West," Cardington returned. "I've no doubt you are calculating the number of microbes that ancient piece of furniture could accommodate, and thinking that a brass bedstead would be much more sanitary."
"You do me injustice," Leigh retorted good-humouredly. "Even scientists have their unprofessional moments. I was just reminded of a story I once read of a bed of that kind with a movable canopy that came down in the night and smothered the occupant."
"Excellent," said Cardington. "The thing was worked, as I remember, from the room above, and was used by the robber host to persuade his guests to part peaceably with their valuables. But I fear that you are going to show an irreverent attitude of mind toward the local divinities."
"And what may they be?"
"Two in particular, an alliterative couple, Family and Furniture."
"Why not add Folly to the number?" Leigh suggested.
"An instinct of self-preservation should prevent such an addition. That might be as injudicious as it would have been for some bright young man in ancient Egypt, five thousand years before the Christian era, to express a doubt concerning the divinity of the sacred bull. The correctness of his conjecture would not have saved him from a horrible death at the hands of the faithful." And he began to lead the way downstairs.