On the upper floors the house was old and rambling. It straggled up and down on different levels, along dark passages and into irregular little rooms, badly lit by small windows, and, like the shop, encumbered with objects; not only by the furniture, which was much too bulky for the size of the rooms, but also by properties which belonged to the shop, and which at various times had been huddled upstairs in the course of a clearance below. There were rows of dresses hanging on hooks, halberts and muskets propped up in the corners, albums of photographs for reference lying on the tables, pairs of boots and buskins thrust away behind the curtains and under the valences. You felt convinced that every drawer was packed so that it could only just be induced to shut, and that if you opened the door of a cupboard a crowd of imprisoned articles would come tumbling out helter-skelter. Everything was old and fusty; tawdry, and pretentious under its grime. Outside, the snow had gathered in tiny drifts along the leadwork of the latticed windows, making the rooms darker than they already were, and had heaped itself against the panes two or three inches above the window-sills. In the mornings the frost left fern-frond patterns on the panes; but although it was thus rendered almost impossible to see out, the bright frost and snow were a not unpleasant relief, for they were something clean and fresh, something of quite recent arrival and of certain departure, in contrast to the contents of the house, which had lain there accumulating for so many years, and which offered no promise of a disturbing hand in the years to come. II