held a miscellaneous assortment of combs, hairpins, and brushes.
Here stood a gloomy antique chair, the patriarch of its tribe,
whose arms of blackened oak embraced a pair of pert, new deal
bonnet-boxes not a fortnight old. There, thrown down lightly on a
rugged tapestry table-cover, the long labor of centuries past,
lay the brief, delicate work of a week ago in the shape of silk
and muslin dresses turned inside out. In the midst of all these
confusions and contradictions, Miss Jessie ranged to and fro, the
active center of the whole scene of disorder, now singing at the
top of her voice, and now declaring in her lighthearted way that
one of us must make up his mind to marry her immediately, as she
was determined to settle for the rest of her life at The Glen
Tower.

She followed up that announcement, when we met at dinner, by
inquiring if we quite understood by this time that she had left
her "company manners" in London, and that she meant to govern us
all at her absolute will and pleasure, throughout the whole
period of her stay. Having thus provided at the outset for the
due recognition of her authority by the household generally and
individually having briskly planned out all her own forthcoming
occupations and amusements over the wine and fruit at dessert,
and having positively settled, between her first and second cups
of tea, where our connection with them was to begin and where it
was to end, she had actually succeeded, when the time came to
separate for the night, in setting us as much at our ease, and in
making herself as completely a necessary part of our household as
if she had lived among us for years and years past.