Like the man and woman in the toy weather-house, Mr. Schröder's two houses never were "to the fore" at the same time. When the one was lighted, the other was gloomy; when the one was tenanted, the other was empty; when the one was decorated, the other was comfortless. As the second breath of summer came floating over Kensington Gardens, after the may- and apple-blossoms had disappeared, but long before dust and drouth had settled down on the greensward and the umbrageous walks of the parks; when there was evinced among young men a perpetual desire to dine at the Star-and-Garter at Richmond, and an undying hatred of passing the Sunday within the metropolis; when Mr. Quartermaine began to wonder where he should stow all his visitors, and Mr. Skindle of the Orkney Arms began to think of building; when fashionable people thought it no more harm to sit in their carriages outside Grange's, than to call diamonds 'dimonds,' or ribbon 'ribbin;' when the Sunday-afternoon attendance at the Zoological Gardens began to exceed the week-day; when green-peas began to have some taste, and asparagus to be something else beside stalk and stick,--then the glory of the Saxe-Coburg-Square establishment showed strong symptoms of waning. The usual amount of solemn dinner-party had been gone through; every body necessary had been asked to balls, music, and _conversazioni_; Mrs. Schröder's taste and Mr. Schröder's wealth had been exhibited constantly at the Opera and at some of the most fashionable gatherings in London; and one, if not both, of them longed for a little quiet. This resulted in the renting of Uplands, when blank misery fell upon the establishment in Saxe-Coburg Square. All the ornaments and nicknacks were removed and put away; the chandeliers were shrouded in big holland bags; the shutters were put up; and the spurious Schröder ancestors scowled dimly from the wall over a great desert of dining-table, no longer shining with snowy damask or sparkling silver and glass. The staff of servants,--the French cook and the Italian confectioner; the ponderous butler, so frequently mistaken by Mrs. Schröder's West-end friends for a City magnate; the solemn footman, large-whiskered, large-calved, ambrosial, and most offensive; the lady's-maid and the buttons,--all, down to the kitchen-maid, who lived in a perpetual state of grease and dripping, and who was preparing herself for "plain cook, good," in the _Times_ column of 'Want Places,'--all went away into what the said kitchen-maid was heard to designate "that rubbiging country;" and an old woman, weird, puffy, dusty, with old black silk stitched about her head where her hair should have been, and with bits of beard sticking on her chin, came and took up her abode in the housekeeper's room and "kep' 'ouse" herself.