"It's twenty years since the boys used to come home from boarding-school for their holidays, but I haven't forgotten what young folks like," she explained to Mavis and Merle, as she helped them to unpack. "It's more like a boys' bedroom than a girls' perhaps, but I just collected anything of Master Richard's and Master Cyril's that I could find about the house. If you don't care about them we'll take them out." "But we _love_ boys' things," declared Merle, admiring the pictures of dogs and horses on the walls, opening the drawers of the cabinet of birds' eggs, and touching the whip and the cricket bat with friendly fingers. Mavis was already deep in _Coral Island_, and temporarily deaf to the outside world, but she had just sufficient sense of manners left to grunt "It's a gorgeous bookcase!" before she lost herself in the South Seas among the palm trees. "Two very nice young ladies, and to have them here is like old times," Jessop had confided to Tom, the factotum. "The house has always seemed dull since Master Cyril went away. Miss Mavis reminds me of him, with her blue eyes and that gentle little voice of hers. Now, Miss Merle is like Master Percy. He'd a way with him! I never knew what was going to happen next when he was at home. 'Jessop' he'd say, 'you're a wonderful woman!' Then I knew he meant to coax me to let him keep his rabbits in his bedroom, or do something of that sort. Girls are quieter than boys, but these two will cheer us up a little, I dare say. We all seem to have grown old here lately."