There was another voyage, rich in its promise of ultimate rewards, but so perilous that it would only be undertaken under escort.  That was to the housekeeper’s room through a maze of basement passages.  On the road two fiercely-gleaming roaring pits of fire had to be encountered.  Grown-ups said this was the furnace that heated the house, but the little boy had his own ideas on the subject.  Every Sunday his nurse used to read to him out of a little devotional book, much in vogue in the “sixties,” called The Peep of Day, a book with the most terrifying pictures.  One Sunday evening, so it is said, the little boy’s mother came into the nursery to find him listening in rapt attention to what his nurse was reading him.

“Emery is reading to me out of a good book,” explained the small boy quite superfluously.

“And do you like it, dear?”

“Very much indeed.”

“What is Emery reading to you about?  Is it about Heaven?”

“No, it’s about ’ell,” gleefully responded the little boy, who had not yet found all his “h’s.”

Those glowing furnace-bars; those roaring flames ... there could be no doubt whatever about it.  A hymn spoke of “Gates of Hell” ... of course they just called it the heating furnace to avoid frightening him.  The little boy became acutely conscious of his misdeeds.  He had taken ... no, stolen an apple from the nursery pantry and had eaten it.  Against all orders he had played with the taps in the sink.  The burden of his iniquities pressed heavily on him; remembering the encouraging warnings Mrs. Fairchild, of The Fairchild Family, gave her offspring as to their certain ultimate destiny when they happened to break any domestic rule, he simply dared not pass those fiery apertures alone.  With his hand in that of his friend Joseph, the footman, it was quite another matter.  Out of gratitude, he addressed Joseph as “Mr. Greatheart,” but Joseph, probably unfamiliar with the Pilgrim’s Progress, replied that his name was Smith.

The interminable labyrinth of passages threaded, the warm, comfortable housekeeper’s room, with its red curtains, oak presses and a delicious smell of spice pervading it, was a real haven of rest.  To this very day, nearly sixty years afterwards, it still looks just the same, and keeps its old fragrant spicy odour.  Common politeness dictated a brief period of conversation, until Mrs. Pithers, the housekeeper, should take up her wicker key-basket and select a key (the second press on the left).  From that inexhaustible treasure-house dates and figs would appear, also dried apricots and those little discs of crystallised apple-paste which, impaled upon straws, and coloured green, red and yellow, were in those days manufactured for the special delectation of greedy little boys.  What a happy woman Mrs. Pithers must have been with such a prodigal wealth of delicious products always at her command!  It was comforting, too, to converse with Mrs. Pithers, for though this intrepid woman