Of course we asked no more questions, but we were all the more curious especially, as these shut up rooms adjoined our own.
Mrs. Deborah showed us the state bedroom, very grand in red satin, with needlework hangings, all a little the worse for wear—the blue room, the white room; her own apartment which was very plain, in green moreen, and Mrs. Chloe's, gay and pretty with Indian chintz, and a white muslin and pink silk toilette-table, covered with bottles of all sorts of washes and lotions for the complexion. Finally, she led us to the door of Mrs. Philippa's apartment, and left us to announce ourselves, telling us to come to her in the still-room, when Mrs. Philippa had done with us.
We knocked, and were admitted by Tupper.
Mrs. Philippa, dressed in a very becoming wrapping-gown and cap, was sitting up in bed, working on a very handsome piece of embroidery, with her silks and working implements on a sort of tray beside her, near which lay a fine tortoise-shell cat with a kitten. There was a great fire, and the air was heavy and close with the odors of musk, and sandalwood, and potpourri. I never entered that room without a kind of insane longing to break out a window-pane.
"Well, nieces, and so you have come at last," was Mrs. Philippa's greeting. "I expected you before, but no doubt more interesting matters claimed your attention than waiting on a poor lonely invalid."
"Aunt Deborah said she thought you would not wish to see us very early, and she has been showing us the king's chamber and the rest of the house," answered Amabel.
"Oh, of course. She makes an idol out of her king's chamber—not that I believe King Charles was ever in this house in the world. Well, and what do you think of the old pile?"
"I think it is beautiful," answered Amabel, sincerely. "I wonder my father does not live here all the time."
"Your father thinks too much of himself to shut himself up in such a lodge in the wilderness as this is," was the reply. "But he thinks it is good enough for his sisters, though he might take a house in Newcastle for us as well as not."
"But, Mrs. Philippa, I thought you did not like Newcastle," I said, rather unwisely. "I am sure you called it an odious place."