Look at those long rows of pewter dishes and platters that grace the shelves. These too are relics of a former age. No doubt the said Sir Lawrence has taken many a good dinner off them. Yet no one points them out as objects worthy of notice, though they are kept as bright and clean as if required for daily use. They have been completely laid upon the shelf half a century ago.
The rest of the furniture of the room is as old as the Protectorate; especially that large Venetian mirror, in its beautiful frame of ebony. What a prize for a modern antiquary.
Poor simple Mrs. Rushmere and Dorothy have not the most remote idea of its value. The old lady thinks it a very becoming glass, which makes people look much handsomer than they really are, and Dorothy contemplates her sweet face in its mysterious depths, and speculates on all who have done the same, and wishes that she could call the sleepers from their graves, and make them pass in review before her.
What a multitude of strange faces, and still stranger fashions, they would bring again to light!
Dorothy sometimes pursues this idea, till she grows afraid of her own conceit, and turns away from the mirror, as if she really saw the spectres she had conjured up.
But the crowning glory of the place is a large dome-shaped cupboard, which fits into a corner of the spacious room, and fills it from the floor to the ceiling. It opens with a single door, the outside of which is a fine picture by some old master, representing the judgment of Solomon. The reverse side, when the door is opened suddenly, calls forth a cry of surprise, and not unusually of terror, from the spectator.
There stands our first father, in the naked deformity of sin, in the very act of eating the forbidden fruit, with a face so full of remorse and agony, that it chills the heart of the gazer with its unmitigated horror.
Though used to this terrible picture from a child, Dorothy could never look at it without a shudder. When Gilbert and she were children, and behaved amiss, Mrs. Rushmere had only to threaten to shut them up in the cupboard with father Adam, and it brought them instantly to their senses.
The shelves of this mysterious piece of furniture were filled with Japan china. Real "chaney"—as good Mrs. Rushmere called it—which, like the ebony-framed mirror, had belonged to the family in its bygone days of wealth and importance. These gorgeous tea-cups were never used but on high-days and holidays, or on the advent of any particular visitors.
Such an unusual event had just taken place, and a mild looking old lady, in a plaited cap and brown stuff gown, was going to and fro, from the open cupboard to the table, arranging some of the exquisite china cups and saucers on a carved wooden tray, and bringing sundry delicate cakes and biscuits, of Dorothy's own making, from their hidden receptacles, to do honour to the evening meal. The table was covered with a snow-white damask cloth, manufactured by the same skilful hands, and boasted a good supply of fine wheaten bread, and the fresh cheese and butter, for which the Heath Farm had become famous, under the said damsel's superintendence.