We had a long delightful day of anticipation, and putting things where they had to go, and in the evening Mother and Aunt Gerty came. They had got out of the train at Swiss Cottage, and asked their way to their own house. Aunt Gerty had her mouth wide open; Mother had hers tight shut. She was not intending to carp or pass opinions, but the front-door knocker was a regular slap in the face, and took her breath away. She tried to talk of something else, and whispered to Aunt Gerty, "Rather an inconvenient place for a coal-shoot, isn't it! Right alongside the front-door!" I hastened to explain that that was the larder-window she saw, to prevent unpleasantness. Mother shivered when she got into the hall, which is vast and flagged with marble like a church. "It strikes very cold to the feet!" she said to Aunt Gerty. "Mine are like so much ice." "Oh, come along, and we'll brew you a glass of hot toddy!" Aunt Gerty said cheerfully. "It's a bit chilly, I think, myself, but 'ansom, like the big 'all where 'Amlet 'as the players!" Aunt Gerty is generally most careful, but she is apt to drop a little h or so when she is excited. She could hardly contain herself, as Ariadne and I had hoped, when she saw the gilt stairs leading up into the study. "What price broken legs? Why, I shall have to get roller-skates or take off my shoes and stockings to go up them!" "So you will, Aunt Gerty," said Ariadne. "It is one of George's rules. He made Lady Scilly even leave off her high heels before she used them." "Took 'em off for her himself with his lily hands, I suppose?" snorted my aunt. "Well, I don't expect you will find me treading those golden stairs very often. I ain't one of George's elect." "Such wretched things to keep clean," Mother complained. "The servants are sure to object to the extra work, and give up their places, and I am sure one can't blame them, and such good ones as we've got, too, in these awful times, when looking for a cook is like looking for a needle in a bottle of hay. Heavens, is the girl there all the time listening to me?" Kate was, luckily, down-stairs, showing Elizabeth Cawthorne the way about her kitchen, or else it would have been very imprudent to tell a servant how valuable she is. Mother was cowed by the danger she had escaped, but Aunt Gerty went on flouncing about, pricing everything and tinkling her nails against pots and jugs, till she stopped suddenly and put her muff before her face-- "Well, of all the improper objects to meet a lady's eye coming into a gentleman's house! Who's that mouldy old statue of?" I told her that was Autolycus. "Cover yourself, Tollie, I would," Aunt Gerty said, going past him affectedly. "Oh, look, Lucy, at all those dragons and cockroaches doing splits on the fire-place! Brass, too, trimmed copper. My God!" "I shall just have to clean that brass fire-place myself," said Mother. "I shall never have the face to ask Kate to do it."