that Galvin possessed nothing with even a family resemblance to a bump of locality. Her capacity for dusting was inexhaustible; but when it came to replacing the articles thus treated she was something less systematic than a magpie. For one thing, she manœuvred my books in the same manner as my mattress and my pillows, with the evident impression that, like the former, they were reversible, and, like the latter, interchangeable at will. The effect of this inspiration was volume five where volume two should be, volume one in the place of volume six, and volumes three and four standing, with an air of extreme dissatisfaction, on their heads. The same rule applied to my pictures, each of which, after the morning’s dusting was completed, had a pronounced list, like a ship with her port coal-bins full and her starboard bunkers empty. So, too, I would find all the objects on my sideboard crowded desperately to one side, as if they had been the passengers on an
