It was not one of Mary Musgrave’s fancies to furnish her hall like a drawing-room. She had collected round her a few things for use, but she was not rich enough to make her favourite place into a toy, as so many people do, nor had she the opportunity of “picking up” rarities to ornament it, as she might have liked to do had she been in the way of them. The room had been a barn fifty years before. Then it became a family storeroom, was fitted up at one end with closets and cupboards, and held the household linen, and sometimes the winter supply of fruit. It was Mary who had rescued it back again to gentler use; but she had not been able to re-decorate or renew it with such careful pretence at antiquity as is common nowadays. All that she could do for it was to collect her own doings there, and all the implements for her work. The windowed recess which got the morning sun was her business-room. There stood an old secretaire, chosen not because of its age or suitability, but because it was the only thing she had available, a necessity which often confers as much grace as the happiest choice. Opposite the doorway was an old buffet, rough, yet not uncharacteristic, which had been scrubbed clean by a generous housemaid when Miss Musgrave first took to the hall. And much it had wanted that cleansing; but the soap and the water and the scrubbing-brush had not agreed very well, it must be allowed, with the carved mahogany, which ought to have been oak. Between the open door and this big piece of furniture was a square of old Turkey carpet, very much faded, yet still agreeable to the eye, and a spindle-legged table of Queen Anne’s days, with drawers which held Miss Musgrave’s knitting and a book, and sometimes homelier matters, mendings which she chose to do herself, calculations which were not meant for the common eye.