Nearly every old house has its secret cupboard--usually in the wall. Very often one may be found behind the panelling, and near the fire. In my own house is one cut in granite, the stone on all sides, and is the depth of my arm. I have little doubt that these warm, dry cupboards, so secured that no mouse can make its way in, were for the preservation of deeds. Others were for jewellery and plate. The custom of having secret cupboards was continued after cupboards had become independent articles of furniture, standing out in the room; but then they took the form of secret compartments, not opened by keys, but by moving some part of the moulding, or by pressure on some ornamental plate or piece of inlaid wood or ivory. It is said that everyone has his secret closet, and that in it everyone has his skeleton. I do not know much about the cupboards of nowaday folk, but when I think of those I knew in the olden times, it seems to me that they were full of nothing other than sweets and spices, of gold and gems; anyhow, such were the cupboards of our grandmothers, our maiden aunts, and our great-grandmothers. And when we chance in some secret compartment to light on a bundle of their letters, and look into them, then it is just like the opening of their corner-cupboards, out pours a sweet and spicy fragrance--that of the generous thoughts and kind wishes of their dear old honest and God-fearing hearts. [Illustration] [Illustration: CEILINGS] CHAPTER V. When I was a small boy at King's College School, I boarded with one of the masters, at a corner house in Queen's Square. There was a long room in which we boarders--there were some five-and-twenty of us--had our meals, and prepared lessons for the morrow in the evening, under the supervision of an usher. One day at tea, the usher having been summoned out of the room, we boys essayed who could throw up his piece of bread and butter highest. Mine went against the ceiling, and, the butter being unusually thick, adhered. I was in great alarm; there was no getting it down: it stuck, and neither the usher nor the master, when he entered for prayers, observed it. During preparation of lessons, during prayers, my eyes reverted to the piece of bread and butter. It remained unnoticed. That it was also unobserved by the servants, who were supposed to clean the room, is not perhaps matter of surprise. The next day passed--still the bread and butter hung suspended--but on the third day, during prayers, flop!--down it came in front of the master, and left behind it a nasty, greasy stain on the ceiling. "Whose piece of bread and butter is that?" asked the master, when Amen had been said. I had to confess, and was whipped. That stain in the ceiling grew darker daily. The dust of the room adhered to the butter. It was not effaced all the while I remained a boarder, and I involuntarily every day, and frequently daily, looked at it, to see how much deeper the tinge was that the patch acquired.