kitchen was whitewashed, but the dining-room was dark wood from
floor to ceiling, and across the ceiling there were heavy black
beams. There was a muddled maze of dusty furniture--the breakfast-
room furniture from the old home where they had lived all their
lives. It seemed a very long time ago, and a very long way off.

There was the table certainly, and there were chairs, but there was
no supper.

"Let's look in the other rooms," said Mother; and they looked. And
in each room was the same kind of blundering half-arrangement of
furniture, and fire-irons and crockery, and all sorts of odd things
on the floor, but there was nothing to eat; even in the pantry there
were only a rusty cake-tin and a broken plate with whitening mixed
in it.

"What a horrid old woman!" said Mother; "she's just walked off with
the money and not got us anything to eat at all."

"Then shan't we have any supper at all?" asked Phyllis, dismayed,
stepping back on to a soap-dish that cracked responsively.

"Oh, yes," said Mother, "only it'll mean unpacking one of those big
cases that we put in the cellar. Phil, do mind where you're walking
to, there's a dear. Peter, hold the light."

The cellar door opened out of the kitchen. There were five wooden
steps leading down. It wasn't a proper cellar at all, the children
thought, because its ceiling went up as high as the kitchen's. A
bacon-rack hung under its ceiling. There was wood in it, and coal.