The clock in the parlor struck ten, and then half-past. Eliza, who had been watching the children, and making up some beds above, now came down and begged Mrs. Varian to come up and go to bed, but she refused. The other servants, who had been over at the fire, possibly helping a little, now came in, bringing a message from Mr. Andrews, that he begged they would all go to bed; and that everything was safe and they must feel no anxiety. It might be some time before he could get away. Missy persuaded her aunt and her mother to go up. Eliza conducted Miss Varian to a small "spare" room. Missy felt a shudder as she put down her candle on the dressing-table of the room where she had seen Mrs. Andrews die. She hoped her mother did not know it. While she was arranging her for the night, she had time to observe the room. It was very much changed since she had last been in it; the pictures were taken from the walls, the position of the furniture altered, she was not sure but that it was other furniture. Certainly the sofa and footstool and large chair were gone. Mr. Andrews himself occupied the small room on the other side of the house that he had had from the first. This room, the largest and best in the house, had been kept as a sort of day nursery for the children through the winter. Missy had often thought of it as calculated to keep alive the memory of their mother, but now it seemed, as if with purpose, that had been avoided, and as if the whole past of the room was to be wiped out.