Doctor and Mrs. Brown also took their departure, Mrs. Philippa—there it goes again—had made herself very agreeable during her stay. She seemed wonderfully well-pleased with her new state of life, and I suppose happiness agreed with her. She gave us all pressing invitations to come and visit her, and was very affectionate to Mrs. Deborah at parting. I believe she did really in some degree begin to appreciate her sister's forbearance toward her through all those weary years. As for her husband, he was always pleasant when he was pleased, and some people are not even that. He was just the husband for Mrs. Philippa for he was too easy-going to mind her little tempers, while he could be firm enough when once he set his foot down.
As soon as our company had departed, Mrs. Deborah set on foot a great house-cleaning and renovating. Sir Julius had intimated his intention to return to Highbeck Hall in the course of the summer with his wife and a party of friends, and Mrs. Deborah was determined to leave all in order for him. I say to leave advisedly, for nothing could shake her determination to depart from Highbeck Hall before Lady Leighton entered it.
"I will never see that woman in my honored mother's place!" she said. "If my brother had chosen to marry a sober respectable person like his second wife, though she had been even a grocer's daughter, I should have nothing to say; but I will never sleep under the same roof with that woman."
Amabel and I found in this cleaning and moving process some diversion at least. It was quite wonderful to me to see what hoards of curious things had accumulated in the house. Such heaps of old finery—silks and satins and laces—such odds and ends of gold and silver, and old-fashioned ornaments and what not. In turning out a chest of drawers one day, we came cross an old needlecase of gold with blue and white enamel, and seeing how much I admired it, Mrs. Deborah gave it to me. Carelessly enough I laid it on the top of a tall cabinet which stood in our bedroom, but when I went to look for it, it had disappeared.
"What can have become of it?" said I to Amabel. "I am sure I laid it here this morning."
"You should have put it carefully away in your work-bag, and then it would have been safe!" remarked Amabel, seeing an occasion which indeed she seldom wanted in my case, for a little homily on tidiness. "Perhaps it has rolled down behind the cabinet."
"I can see it!" said I peeping into the very narrow space between the cabinet and the wall. "But I cannot reach it. Let us try to move the cabinet out a little, Amabel."
To our agreeable surprise, the apparently heavy cabinet moved with a good deal of squeaking and creaking indeed but with tolerable ease, upon rollers concealed in the gilt griffin's claws which formed its feet. I recovered my needlecase and then began admiring the freshness and beauty of the hanging behind the cabinet.
"It is of a different pattern from the rest!" remarked Amabel. "It is like that in the little withdrawing-room down stairs."
"It is not fastened to the wall, either," said I.