Except that Joey and Charlotte were more fully developed, the
house and its inmates, organic and inorganic, were little changed
since Ernest had last seen them. The furniture and the ornaments on
the chimney-piece were just as they had been ever since he could
remember anything at all. In the drawing-room, on either side of the
fireplace there hung the Carlo Dolci and the Sassoferrato as in old
times; there was the water colour of a scene on the Lago Maggiore,
copied by Charlotte from an original lent her by her drawing master,
and finished under his direction. This was the picture of which one of
the servants had said that it must be good, for Mr. Pontifex had given
ten shillings for the frame. The paper on the walls was unchanged; the
roses were still waiting for the bees; and the whole family still
prayed night and morning to be made "truly honest and conscientious."
One picture only was removed- a photograph of himself which had hung
under one of his father and between those of his brother and sister.
Ernest noticed this at prayer time, while his father was reading about
Noah's ark and how they daubed it with slime, which, as it happened,
had been Ernest's favourite text when he was a boy.
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