It was a most delightful house: an old, old house in Holywell with three gables resting on an oaken beam which, in its turn, was supported by oak corbels in the form of dragons and a rotund, festive-looking demon who nevertheless clasped his hands over "the place where the doll’s wax ends" as though he had a pain. Two of the gables possessed large latticed windows, but the third was blank, having, however, a tiny window at the side which looked down the street towards New College. At the back was a long crooked garden that widened out like a tennis racquet at the far end. It was all very delightful and exciting while the furniture was going in and the three stayed at the King’s Arms at the corner. Edmund and Montagu between them took it upon themselves to settle the whereabouts of the furniture and drove the removal men nearly distracted by suggesting at least six positions for each thing as it was carried in. But finally Mr. Wycherly was bound to confess that there was a certain method in their apparent madness. For as the rooms in Holywell filled up, he found that, allowing for difference in their dimensions and, above all, their irregularity of shape, every big piece of furniture was placed in relation to the rest exactly as it had been in the small, square rooms at Remote. Boys are very conservative, and in nothing more so than in their attachment to the familiar. They pestered and worried that most patient foreman till each room contained exactly the same furniture, no more and no less, that had, as Edmund put it, "lived together" in their aunt’s house. Then appeared a cloud on the horizon. Lady Alicia, who loved arranging things for people, had very kindly written to a friend of her own at Abingdon, and through her had engaged "a thoroughly capable woman" to "do for" Mr. Wycherly in Oxford. "She can get a young girl to help her if she finds it too much after you’re settled, but you ought to try and do with one at first; for a move, and such a move—why couldn’t you go into Edinburgh if you want society?—will about ruin you. And, remember, no English servant washes." "Oh, Lady Alicia, I’m sure you are mistaken there," Mr. Wycherly exclaimed, indignant at this supposed slur on his country-women. "I’m sure they look even cleaner and neater than the Scotch." "Bless the man! I’m not talking of themselves—I mean they won’t do the washing, the clothes and sheets and things; you’ll have to put it out or have someone in to do it. Is there a green?" "There is a lawn," Mr. Wycherly said, dubiously—"it’s rather a pleasant garden." "Is there a copper?" "I beg your pardon?" replied the bewildered Mr. Wycherly, thinking this must be some "appurtenance" to a garden of which he was ignorant. "There, you see, there are probably hundreds of things missing in that house that ought to be in it. You’d better put out the washing."