“Yur room is de sou’west room, Miss Em., and called Cuba, ’cause it’s warm and dry. Now less us go in de sou’east room, next to your’n, which we call Louisiany, ’cause it’s warm and damp.” They entered that room, which had a musty and mouldy atmosphere of age and decay, and was furnished with a miscellaneous assortment of old furniture that seemed to have served its time out in the state chambers below, and had been retired to the rest and seclusion of the attic. “I would like to look out of the window,” said Em., going to the front one and throwing open the shutters. But she only looked down on the same scene by starlight as she had beheld by sunset—the descent of the precipice, the river, and the undulating, wooded hills beyond. “Now, less look in de rooms on de north side,” said Liza, going across the hall. “Now this nor’east room we calls Newfoun’lan’, ’cause it’s so cold and damp,” she added as she led the way in. It was filled up, as the other two were, with furniture that had once been very handsome and costly, but was now worn out and dilapidated. A glance into the room sufficed. “Now, Miss Em., I sorter to think as you’ll like dis last room better’n all de rest—dis nor’west room which we do call Alasky, because it is bofe cold and dry. It’s de lumber-room for de whole ’stablishment, and dere’s ebber so many funny and cur’us objects in it,” said the little maid as she admitted Em. into the fourth room. “It is ‘a curiosity shop!’” exclaimed Em., looking around upon a heterogeneous multitude of articles that seemed to be the collection of a century—as most likely it was. There were costly fragments of furniture, curiously carved chair-backs without seats; elaborately embroidered cushions without chairs; richly gilded frames without pictures; old, disfigured pictures without frames; busts without heads; statuettes without hands or feet; vases without pedestals; or pedestals without vases, and an innumerable quantity of other things too bewildering to contemplate. Em. took up one object after another with curious interest, until at length her eyes fell upon a frameless, dusty, dark-looking picture, half hidden among broken vases and crippled statuettes. It was the portrait of a youth in a midshipman’s uniform. Em. took her handkerchief and wiped the dusty face and looked at it. A bright, frank, boyish face; a pair of merry black eyes; a smiling lip, shadowed by a slight mustache; a brown complexion and short, curling black hair, met her gaze. The eyes seemed to meet hers with a mischievious, conscious twinkle, so that she herself smiled into the smiling face. Her heart warmed and melted before it. “Oh, Liza,” she said, “is this a portrait, or is it a fancy sketch? Oh, how life-like it is. And to be pushed away with all this rubbish! Is it a portrait, Liza?” she eagerly inquired. “Which, Miss Em.? That? Oh, yes! That’s poor, dear Marse Lonny’s pictur’,” replied the girl, approaching and holding the candle to it.