two-nineteen-six when new, completed the tale of furniture. The general
impression was one of fulness; the low ceiling, and the immense harvest
of overblown blue roses which climbed luxuriantly up the walls,
intensified this effect. The mantelpiece was crammed with brass
ornaments, and there were two complete sets of brass fire-irons in the
brass fender. Above the mantelpiece a looking-glass, in a wan frame of
bird's-eye maple, with rounded corners, reflected Helen's hat.

Helen abandoned the Windsor chair and tried the arm-chair, and then
stood up.

"Which chair do you recommend?" she asked, nicely.

"Bless ye, child! I never sit here, except at th' desk. I sit in the
kitchen."

A peculiarity of houses in the Five Towns is that rooms are seldom
called by their right names. It is a point of honour, among the
self-respecting and industrious classes, to prepare a room elaborately
for a certain purpose, and then not to use it for that purpose. Thus
James Ollerenshaw's sitting-room, though surely few apartments could
show more facilities than it showed for sitting, was not used as a
sitting-room, but as an office. The kitchen, though it contained a
range, was not used as a kitchen, but as a sitting-room. The scullery,
though it had no range, was filled with a gas cooking-stove and used as
a kitchen. And the back yard was used as a scullery. This arrangement
never struck anybody as singular; it did not strike even Helen as
singular. Her mother's house had exhibited the same oddness until she
reorganised it. If James Ollerenshaw had not needed an office, his
sitting-room would have languished in desuetude. The fact is that the