Francis followed his cousin’s late associate, Miss Willoughby, up three steps of rather dingy stairs, upon which little colonies of children had established themselves here and there with their toys. One young gentleman of tender years was trying to fly a kite in the well of the staircase, with a persevering disregard of atmospheric difficulties and the heads of the passers below; while a young lady, belonging to an adjacent tribe of settlers, took her doll for an airing in a lobster-shell, drawn by a string which wound itself about Mr. Tredethlyn’s legs, and had to be unwound like a bandage. Occasional skirmishers from distant settlements came sliding down the banisters--which, compared to the stairs, were as the modern railroad to the ancient highway--assailing peaceable families with the war-whoop of defiance: and the cries of “Shan’t,”--“Do it again, then, there!”--“Wouldn’t you just like to, now?”--“Won’t I tell my mother, that’s all?”--“Tell-tale-tit, yah!”--resounded in a delightful confusion of voices from the first floor to the attics. Miss Willoughby conducted Francis to a back room upon the third floor--a dark gloomy little room, hung with chocolate-and-drab paper, but enlivened by a little gallery of theatrical photographs, and some engraved portraits cut out of Tallis’s “Shakespeare,” neatly arranged over the mantel-piece. It was not very difficult to perceive that the anomalous piece of furniture, which was too vividly brown for mahogany, too elaborately grained for nature, and which was not quite a chest of drawers, nor altogether a wardrobe, was neither more nor less than a member of the mysterious family of press-bedsteads. It was not difficult to perceive that industrious poverty and simple independence reigned in that three-pair back, whose pitiful goods and chattels, and worthless scraps of ornament, were arranged with as exquisite a neatness as might pervade the chambers of a bachelor in the Albany, or a gandin of the Faubourg St. Honoré. “I shall miss your cousin very much,” said Miss Willoughby; “we got on so nicely together.” “She lived with you? Here?” asked Francis. “Yes; we shared this apartment. It made the rent come lighter for both of us, and apartments are so dear in London; and of course it was the same advantage in coals--not that we wanted many for our little bit of cooking, but one can’t even boil a kettle without a fire; and saveloys and sandwiches are apt to pall upon one after a long continuance; so, having Miss Turner to live with me made it altogether come much pleasanter; besides which, we were always the best of friends.”