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. Next morning, however,
the photograph had found its way back again, a little dusty and with a
bit of the gilding chipped off from one corner of the frame, but there
sure enough it was. I suppose they put it back when they found how rich
he had become.
In the dining-room the ravens were still trying to feed Elijah over the
fireplace; what a crowd of reminiscences did not this picture bring back!
Looking out of the window, there were the flower beds in the front garden
exactly as they had been, and Ernest found himself looking hard against
the blue door at the bottom of the garden to see if there was rain
falling, as he had been used to look when he was a child doing lessons
with his father.
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