Some alterations
rendered necessary by this modification had been made, but
substantially the house was unchanged. Our apartment comprised four or
five rooms on the left of the landing and at the top of the house,
which consisted of three stories. The chief room was the parlor, which
looked down through a square bow-window on the street. This room was of
irregular shape, one end being narrower than the other, and nearly
fitting the space at this end was a kind of projecting shelf or
mantelpiece (only, of course, there was no fireplace under it, open
fireplaces being unknown in Germany), upon which rested an old cracked
looking-glass, made in two compartments, the frame of which, black with
age and fly-spots, was fastened against the wall. The shelf was
supported by two pilasters; but the object of the whole structure was a
mystery; so far as appeared, it served no purpose but to support the
looking-glass, which might just as well have been suspended from a nail
in the wall. Paton, I remember, betrayed a great deal of curiosity
about it; and since the consideration of the problem was more in his
line of business than in mine, I left it to him.
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