A short time before I had seen the girl on the staircase bending over cleaning the banisters, her reddened face close to her large hands.

You share their House, your passing hand helps to polish the base of that wooden figure that ends the banisters, you know the childish delight of that wide short chimney in the big turret room, a chimney so wide and so short that you can stand inside the great crooked fireplace and whisper to the birds that look down from the edge of the chimney only a yard or two above you.

No. 1 remained by the front door, No. 2, after a moment's hesitation, motioned us to seats near the fireplace in the great reception hall, a room by itself, wainscoted with carved oak, that also formed the banisters and the railing of a sort of balcony above, while the walls were hung with rich-hued tapestries, whose colours were revealed by quaint shield-shaped electroliers of gilded glass.

Slowly she descended the stairs, one hand at her breast, one gripping the banister.

So down the stairs stepped the sorrowing baby, holding the banisters with both small hands, for it was necessary for him in descending the steps to have both feet at one time on each, and noiselessly almost did he proceed, for his fairy tread made no sound, and his sobs were tried to be suppressed, in the earnest determination to attempt to find his way to his home.

He shut the door gently and went downstairs agin, feeling in 'is pocket for a match, and, not finding one, 'e picked out the softest stair 'e could find and, leaning his 'ead agin the banisters, went to sleep.

And then he tore out of the room, mounted the banisters, and slid downstairs in an utterly unbecoming fashion, considering that he was a man of thirty-five and the head of the house.

On the previous day she had been sitting on the cold new oilcloth of the topmost stairs, minutely instructing a maid in the craft of polishing banisters.

How I flew down it this morning, three steps at a time, and had some ado to hinder myself from sliding down the banisters, as we have all often, with dangerous joy, done at home!

Furious, I bent to snatch my rifle from the settle where it lay, and, as I flung it to my shoulder, wheeling to go, my eyes fell upon a figure stealing down the stairway from above, a woman in flowered silk, bare of throat and elbow, fingers scarcely touching the banisters as she moved.