To work she set, and what with rummaging out, scrubbing up, turning, twisting, nailing, scouring, dying, and borrowing, things were put in some sort of order, and accommodation provided for a numerous company at breakfast. It was the custom of Lady Goodman's day, for the bride and bridegroom to sit in full dress during a week, and receive congratulations from all the neighbouring gentry: and sorely did she regret the impossibility of reviving so venerable a pageant on the present happy occasion; but there was no option, and fortunately the fashion of setting out in a chaise and four, relieved her from the mortification of confessing that the festivities of a hymeneal scene could not be protracted under her roof beyond the cake-cutting hour. The waste suites of unfurnished apartments were decked out with green branches, and flowers disposed in arches and alcoves, so that Miss Ferret converted the whole house into one mighty bower. She rooted out some old moth-eaten banners, which were kept as an heir-loom in the attic story, where, reposing under lock and key, they bore mouldering testimony to the ancestral valour of Sir Roger's blood; also a stand of colours which had been presented to his father, who raised a regiment of Yeomanry; some Free-Masonry insignia, which glittered with embroidery of tarnished gold and silver; elks' horns, which had been sent as a curiosity; two American bows; a pair of snow shoes; some halberts, and a trumpet which were taken in the rebellion of forty-five, with other articles which had not seen the light for years, but now came forward, however incongruously, to vary the sylvan decorations, and were judiciously commingled with family portraits in massive frames; an ivory ship, which, covered with a glass bell, made a great figure; a canoe; two plaster-of-paris cupids; a leaden fawn; Harlequin and Columbine; Neptune and Hebe of the same material, and King William on horseback, well executed in bronze; so as altogether to produce an imposing and animated effect, along a vista of the entire front, including corridors, and enliven the "eternal shade" which would otherwise have resulted from the great quantity of laurel, spruce, fir, and other evergreens forced into company to fill the void.