Nearly all the furniture, as well as the two guns, had belonged to Mr.
Bates. It was solid, and very old--a tall-boy with a drawer that,
opening out, made a writing-desk; a bureau with a latticed glass
front; three chairs of the Chippendale farmhouse order; and one vast
chair, covered with leather and adorned with nails, that had probably
been dozed in by the hall-porter of some great mansion more than a
century ago. Here and there Mavis had of course dabbed her small
prettinesses--blue china and a clock on the mantel-shelf, colored
cushions, photographs of the children, views of Rodchurch High Street,
the Chase, Rodhaven Pier; and the old and the new, the useful and the
ornamental, alike whispered to her of fulfilled desires, gratified
fancies, and William Dale.
It was her husband's room. Perhaps that formed the real source of all
its charms, the essence or base of attraction that lay deep beneath
visual presentations of chairs and fire-gleamings, or associations of
ideas, or memories of past happiness. Those were his books, behind the
latticed glass--the _Elocution Manual_, the _Elements of Rhetoric_,
the ten-volumed _People's Encyclopedia_, that he had read, and still
read so assiduously. It was here that he ate, drank, and mused.
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