Something aloft very large and black at this moment startled Emily. Johnnie, who had climbed up a tall poplar tree, and was shaking it portentously, began to let himself down apparently at the peril of his life, and the girls at the same moment coming out of the house, welcomed Emily, letting her know that their father had given them a large, _lovely_ cuckoo clock to hangup in Parliament. "And you shall come and see it," they said. Emily knew this was a most unusual privilege. "Johnnie is not gone up there to look for nests," said Gladys, "but to reconnoitre the country. If we let you know what for, you won't tell?" "Certainly not," said Emily, and she was borne off to Parliament, feeling a curiosity to see it, because John had fitted it up for the special and exclusive delectation of his young brood. It embodied his notion of what children would delight in. An extraordinary place indeed she thought it. At least fifty feet long, and at the end farthest from the house, without carpet. A carpenter's bench, many tools, and some machines were there, shavings strewed the floor; something, evidently meant to turn out a wheel-barrow, was in course of being hewn from a solid piece of wood, by very young carpenters, and various articles of furniture by older hands were in course of concoction. "Johnnie and Cray carved this in the winter," said the girls, "and when it is done it will be a settle, and stand in the arbour where papa smokes sometimes." At the other end of the room was spread a very handsome new Turkey carpet; a piano stood there, and a fine pair of globes; the walls were hung with maps, but also with some of the strangest pictures possible; figures chiefly, with scrolls proceeding from their mouths, on which sentences were written. A remarkable chair, very rude and clumsy, but carved all over with letters, flowers, birds, and other devices, attracted Emily's attention. "What is that? Why, don't you see that it's a throne? Father's throne when he comes to Parliament to make a speech, or anything of that sort there. Johnnie made it, but we all carved our initials on it." Emily inspected the chair, less to remark on the goodness of the carving than to express her approval of its spirit. Johnnie's flowers were indeed wooden, but his birds and insects, though flat and rough, were all intended to be alive. He had too much directness, and also real vitality, to carve poor dead birds hanging by the legs with torn and ruffled feathers, and showing pathetically their quenched and faded eyes; he wanted his birds to peck and his beetles to be creeping. Luckily for himself, he saw no beauty in death and misery, still less could think them ornamental.