"Blue were their eyes as the fairy-flax, Their cheeks like the dawn of day." Longfellow. A soft rather shaky sort of tap at the door. It does not all at once reach the rather deaf ears of the little old lady and tall, still older gentleman who are seated in their usual arm-chairs, one with his newspaper by the window, the other with her netting by the fire, in the exceedingly neat-neat, indeed, is no word for it-"parlour" of Arbitt Lodge. In what part of the country this queerly-named house was-is still, perhaps-to be found there is no particular reason for telling; whence came this same queer name will be told in good time. The parlour suited its name anyway better far than it would that of "drawing-room," which would be given it nowadays. There was a round table in the middle; there were high-backed mahogany chairs against the wall, polished by age and careful rubbing to that stage of dark shininess which makes even mahogany pleasant to the eye, and with seats of flowering silk damask whose texture must have been very good to be so faded without being worn; there were spindle-legged side-tables holding inlaid "papier-mache" desks and rose-wood work-boxes, and two or three carved cedar or sandal-wood cases of various shapes.