bore the initials “J.  R.”—­Timothy had always believed they might turn out to be Joshua Reynolds, but Soames, who admired them, had discovered that they were only John Robinson; and a doubtful Morland of a white pony being shod.  Deep-red plush curtains, ten high-backed dark mahogany chairs with deep-red plush seats, a Turkey carpet, and a mahogany dining-table as large as the room was small, such was an apartment which Soames could remember unchanged in soul or body since he was four years old.  He looked especially at the two drawings, and thought:  ’I shall buy those at the sale.’

From the dining-room he passed into Timothy’s study.  He did not remember ever having been in that room.  It was lined from floor to ceiling with volumes, and he looked at them with curiosity.  One wall seemed devoted to educational books, which Timothy’s firm had published two generations back-sometimes as many as twenty copies of one book.  Soames read their titles and shuddered.  The middle wall had precisely the same books as used to be in the library at his own father’s in Park Lane, from which he deduced the fancy that James and his youngest brother had gone out together one day and bought a brace of small libraries.  The third wall he approached with more excitement.  Here, surely, Timothy’s own taste would be found.  It was.  The books were dummies.  The fourth wall was all heavily curtained window.  And turned toward it was a large chair with a mahogany reading-stand attached, on which a yellowish and folded copy of The Times, dated July 6, 1914, the day Timothy first failed to come down, as if in preparation for the War, seemed waiting for him still.  In a corner stood a large globe of that world never visited by Timothy, deeply convinced of the unreality of everything but England, and permanently upset by the sea, on which he had been very sick one Sunday afternoon in 1836, out of a pleasure boat off the pier at Brighton, with Juley and Hester, Swithin and Hatty Chessman; all due to Swithin, who was always taking things into his head, and who, thank goodness, had been sick too.  Soames knew all about it, having heard the tale fifty times at least from one or other of them.  He went up to the globe, and gave it a spin; it emitted a faint creak and moved about an inch, bringing into his purview a daddy-long-legs which had died on it in latitude 44.

‘Mausoleum!’ he thought.  ‘George was right!’ And he went out and up the stairs.  On the half-landing he stopped before the case of stuffed humming-birds which had delighted his childhood.  They looked not a day older, suspended on wires above pampas-grass.  If the case were opened the birds would not begin to hum, but the whole thing would crumble, he suspected.  It wouldn’t be worth putting that into the sale!  And suddenly he was caught by a memory of Aunt Ann—­dear old Aunt Ann—­holding him by the hand in front of that case and saying:  “Look, Soamey!  Aren’t they bright