Oh mirror, mirror on the wall, Who is the fairest of us all?—­The Three Bears

“I do really think Terry has found the secret of happiness, for a little while at least,” said Rosamond, entering Mrs. Poynsett’s room.  “That funny little man in the loan museum has asked him to help in the arrangement.”

“Who is it?”

“The little watchmaker, or watch cobbler, in the old curiosity shop.”

“Yes; Terry calls him a descendant of the Genoese Frescobaldi, and I’m sure his black eyes were never made for an English head.  Terry has always haunted those uncanny wares of his, and has pursued them to the museum. ’’Tis not every young gentleman I would wish to see there,’ says the old man, ’but the Honourable Mr. De Lancey has the soul of an antiquarian.’”

“They say the old man is really very clever and well read.”

“He looks like an old magician, with his white cap and spectacles, and he had need to have a wand to bring order out of that awful chaos.  Everybody all round has gone and cleared out their rubbish-closet.  Upon my word, it looks so.  There are pictures all one network of cracks, and iron caps and gauntlets out of all the halls in every stage of rust, and pots and pans and broken crocks, and baskets of coin all verdigris and tarnish!—­Pah!”

“Are Miles’s birds safe?”

“Oh yes, with a swordfish’s sword and a sawfish’s saw making a trophy on the top.  Terry is in the library, hunting material for a dissertation upon the ancient unicorn, which ought to conclude with the battle royal witnessed by Alice in Wonderland.  The stuffed department is numerous but in a bad way as to hair, and chiefly consists of everybody’s grandmother’s old parrots and squirrels and white rats.  Then, every boy, who ever had a fit of birds’ eggs or butterflies, has sent in a collection, chiefly minus the lower wings, and with volunteer specimens of moth; but luckily some give leave to do what they please with them, so the magician is making composition animals with the debris.”

“Not really!”

“I made a feeble attempt with an admiral’s wings and an orange tip, but I was scouted.  About four dilapidated ones make up a proper specimen, and I can’t think how it is all to be done in the time; but really something fit to be seen is emerging.  Terry is sorting the coins, a pretty job, I should say; but felicity to him.  But oh! the industrial articles!  There are all the regalia, carved out of cherry-stones, and a patchwork quilt of 5000 bits of silk each no bigger than a shilling.  And a calculation of the middle verse in the Bible, and the longest verse, and the shortest verse, and the like edifying Scriptural researches, all copied out like flies’ legs, in writing no one can see but Julius with his spectacles off, and set in a brooch as big as the top of a thimble, all done by a one-legged sergeant of marines.  So that the line might not be out done, I offered my sergeant-major’s banner-screen, but I am sorry to say they declined it, which made me jealous.”