habitation excluded every other idea from the mind of our fair
guest. She pinned up the nankeen-colored traveling dress in
festoons all round her on the spot; informed us that we were now
about to make acquaintance with her in the new character of a
woman of business; and darted downstairs in mad high spirits,
screaming for Matilda and the trunks like a child for a set of
new toys. The wholesome protest of Nature against the artificial
restraints of modern life expressed itself in all that she said
and in all that she did. She had never known what it was to be
happy before, because she had never been allowed, until now, to
do anything for herself. She was down on her knees at one moment,
blowing the fire, and telling us that she felt like Cinderella;
she was up on a table the next, attacking the cobwebs with a long
broom, and wishing she had been born a housemaid. As for my
unfortunate friend, the upholsterer, he was leveled to the ranks
at the first effort he made to assume the command of the domestic
forces in the furniture department. She laughed at him, pushed
him about, disputed all his conclusions, altered all his
arrangements, and ended by ordering half his bedroom furniture to
be taken back again, for the one unanswerable reason that she
meant to do without it.

As evening approached, the scene presented by the two rooms
became eccentric to a pitch of absurdity which is quite
indescribable. The grim, ancient walls of the bedroom had the
liveliest modern dressing-gowns and morning-wrappers hanging all
about them. The man in armor had a collection of smart little
boots and shoes dangling by laces and ribbons round his iron
legs. A worm-eaten, steel-clasped casket, dragged out of a
corner, frowned on the upholsterer's brand-new toilet-table, and