Martha said, where Miss Crabingway read or attended to her correspondence; but, in spite of the books, it looked more like an interesting museum of odds and ends. A spacious kitchen and scullery with a big larder, and a cosy little sitting-room, leading out of the kitchen, and set apart for the use of Martha and Ellen, completed the ground floor.

There seemed to be a good many windows in each room, so it ought to be a light house in the daytime, Pamela thought; otherwise her first impression of sombre richness was strengthened after seeing over the rest of the house. The furniture and fittings were all good and heavy-looking; the walls were everywhere crowded with pictures—some originals, some copies of well-known pictures, and some photographic picture studies of people and places. There were carpets and dark furniture in every room. And what struck Pamela as being very strange was that each room in the house had at least one odd-sized piece of furniture in it—either much too large or much too small to be in keeping with the rest of the room; and this particular piece, in each case, seemed to occupy a very prominent position, so that one couldn't help noticing it. It reminded Pamela of the doll's house belonging to Olive at home, where the doll's kettle and saucepan were the same size as the chairs, and too big to stand on the doll's kitchen stove. She wondered how Miss Crabingway had come to possess these odd bits of furniture, and was just looking at the extraordinarily small piano-stool set before the huge grand piano in the drawing-room, when a sudden ring at the bell announced a fresh arrival, and Martha hurried out of the room to open the front door.