Report said that Mrs.
Pontifex starched the sheets for her best bed, and I can well
believe it.
How well do I remember her parlour half filled with the organ
which her husband had built, and scented with a withered apple or
two from the pyrus japonica that grew outside the house; the picture
of the prize ox over the chimney-piece, which Mr. Pontifex himself had
painted; the transparency of the man coming to show light to a coach
upon a snowy night, also by Mr. Pontifex; the by Mr. Pontifex; the
little old man and a little old woman who told the weather; the
china shepherd and shepherdess; the jars of feathery flowering grasses
with a peacock's feather or two among them to set them off, and the
china bowls full of dead rose leaves dried with bay salt. All has long
since vanished and become a memory, faded but still fragrant to
myself.
Nay, but her kitchen- and the glimpses into a cavernous cellar
beyond it, wherefrom came gleams from the pale surfaces of milk
cans, or it may be of the arms and face of a milkmaid skimming the
cream; or again her storeroom, where among other treasures she kept
the famous lipsalve which was one of her especial glories, and of
which she would present a shape yearly to those whom she delighted
to honour.
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