The week had been a very long week to Gervase. To him, poor fellow, there was no limit of time; no thought that his obedience was intended, nay, desired to stop at a certain point. He went on dully, keeping at home, keeping indoors, trying in his fatuous way to please his parents. It was a very dull round to him who had known the livelier joys of the Seven Thorns, the beer and the tobacco in the parlour, and Patty flitting about, throwing him a word from time to time. It seemed but a poor sort of paradise to sit among the slow old topers in the smoky room and imbibe the heavy beer; but it is unfortunately a kind of enjoyment which many young men prefer to the fireside at home, even without any addition of a Patty; and the poor Softy was not in this respect so very much inferior to the best and cleverest. The fireside at home, it must be allowed, was not very exciting. To be sure, the room itself was a very different room from that of the Seven Thorns. It was not the drawing-room in which the Piercey family usually sat in the evening, for the drawing-room was upstairs, and Sir Giles could not be taken up without great difficulty in his wheeled chair. It was the library, a large long room, clothed with the mellow tones and subdued gilding of old books, making a background which would have been quite beautiful to an artist. There was a row of windows on one side veiled in long curtains, and between these windows a series of family portraits almost as long as the windows, full length, not very visible in the dim light, affording a little glimpse of colour, and a face here and there looking out from that height upon the little knot of living people below; but the Pierceys of the past were not remarkable any more than the present Pierceys. A shaded lamp was suspended by a very long chain from the high roof, which was scarcely discernible going up so far, with those glimmers of bookcases and tall old portraits leading towards the vague height above; beneath it was a small round table, at which Lady Piercey sat in a great chair with her bright-coloured work; on the other side was Sir Giles among his cushions, with his backgammon board on a stand beside him, where sometimes Margaret, sometimes Dunning played with him till bedtime. Parsons, on the other hand, was so frequently in attendance on her mistress that the two old servants might be taken as part of the family circle. When Margaret took her place at the backgammon board, Dunning had an hour’s holiday, and retired to the much brighter atmosphere of the servants’ hall or the housekeeper’s room. And when Dunning played with Sir Giles, Margaret attended upon Lady Piercey to thread her needles, and select the shades of the silk, and Parsons was set free. The one who was never set free was Mrs. Osborne, whose evenings in this dim room between the two old people were passed in an endless monotony which sometimes made her giddy. The dull wheel of life