"Don't go, Maria. Sit down a minute longer, for I haven't told you the best part of the story yet. After the lady had said good-by and was out of the door, she turned back, and says she: 'Miss Mayfield, when I get the furniture in order, I'm going to send my carriage for you, and you must come over and see if you can recognize your old friends in their new dress and their new home.' I never believed she was goin' to send _her_ carriage for _me_, Maria, but she did. And she took me all over the house, and they've made it over the same as you'd make over an old dress; and it ain't a house any longer, it's a palace. Don't ask me to tell you how it looks, for I can't. I've always wondered what sort of places kings and queens lived in, and now I know. There wasn't a room that didn't have some of my old mahogany in it, but at first I couldn't believe it was the same furniture I'd sold the lady. She'd had all the varnish scraped off, and it was as soft and shiny-lookin' as satin, even that little, old black cradle, and the lady said that when the furniture man began to scrape that, he found it was solid rosewood. We went into the library, and there was Grandfather's old secretary, lookin' so fine and grand, Maria, it took my breath clean away. There wasn't a dent or a scratch on it, and it shone in the light jest like a piece of polished silver, and the prettiest curtains you ever saw fallin' on each side of it. It looked exactly like it belonged in that room. And it does belong there. Why, as I was standin' there lookin' at it, I thought if that old secretary could speak, it would say: 'I've found my place at last.' And it come over me all at once, Maria, that the doctrine of foreordination holds good with things as well as people. That old mahogany never belonged to me nor to Mother. It jest stopped over a while with us, while it was on its way to the lady, and it was hers from the very day it was made. I tell you, Maria, things belong to the folks that can appreciate 'em. That furniture was jest chairs and tables and bedsteads to Mother and me; but the lady knew all about it, when it was made and where it was made, and the name of the man that first made it. And after we'd looked at everything in the house, she took me out to see the gyarden. Such a gyarden! She said it was jest like one she'd seen over in England, and she was plantin' the same kind of flowers in it. The beds were all sorts of shapes, and there was a pool of water in the middle with water-lilies in it, and right by the pool was somethin' that tells the time of day pretty near as well as a clock, jest by the shadow on it. There was a hedge planted all around the gyarden, and the gyardner was settin' out all kinds of flowers, and there was one bed of pansies and another of geraniums in full bloom, and I said: 'I don't know why you wanted my old-fashioned flowers, when you've got such a gyarden as this.' And she smiled and looked down at the geraniums, and