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remembered it for her.
    Thrumm House was remarkable neither for its size nor for its rather undistinguished exterior architecture, a style referred to in some quarters as Nuvo Obfuscian. It was a dwelling of some fifteen or twenty major rooms, interesting mainly in the extent of its internal drawering. The number and variety of drawers was uncommon, if not unique. They covered every wall from floor to ceiling: the bathing chambers, the stairways, the kitchens – even the little porch where Nursey sat on rainy days singing nursery songs and rubbing thube shrinking salve into her charge’s Van Hoost chin – all the rooms were lined with drawers. There were large ones, including those in which the inhabitants slept, medium-sized and smallish ones for the storage of a multitude of necessary things, and then hundreds of very tiny ones along the floor or up beneath the coving of the stained and cracked ceilings. Some had heavy, ornamental castings as handles. Others had simple knobs of porcelain or simulacre or gold.
    In the child’s own room there were one thousand six hundred and forty-three drawers. She
learned
this as soon as she was able to count though she had
known
it before. She learned at the same time that most of the drawers were quite empty. Only one of them had anything in it that she had previously put there. As soon as she could walk, she had taken the jar of thube salve which Nursey was wont to rub into her chin and emptied it into one of the tiniest drawers, refilling the jar with tallow from the kitchen. What moved her to this effort, Buttercup the infant could not have said. Mouse would have said that the thube salve smelled abominably and, more to the point, it itched. The kitchen grease did not smell quite the same, but Nursey, who had very little sense of smell, never noticed the difference and went on tallowing her charge’s chin every afternoon for years.
    A tribe of small waltzing mice lived in several of the medium-sized drawers, drawers which Mouse, though not Buttercup, thought were probably connected to the kitchen because of the smell of toasted cheese which emanated each time she opened them. The mice were companions, not useful for conversation but infinitely amusing in the long, dusky holiday hours when the shutters were closed and there was nothing to do. Some of the drawers in the orangery had lizards living in them, and there were bright, glistening snakes in the drawers of the small porch. All in all, she preferred the mice for the bedroom.
    When Buttercup was still quite young, after she had learned to walk and count but before she was weaned or could talk with clarity, Mr Thrumm began to object to the name ‘Buttercup.’
    ‘Not a name which will do,’ opined Mr Thrumm. ‘Not one which will be acceptable on the occasion.’
    ‘Well, for heaven’s sake, I’ve got to call her something!’ Nursey objected with that stubborn intransigence which was natural to all Nurseys. ‘I can’t go on saying “her” all the time.’
    Mr Thrumm grumbled, but did not insist. Acceptable or not, it was the name by which the infant became known to those around her. As herself, she accepted the name, thinking nothing of it. The mouse part thought to itself that it was a ridiculous name for anyone, but most especially a ridiculous name for this – this being that she was inhabiting.
    Mr Thrumm, in whose house they dwelt, was not the only Mr Thrumm. Buttercup was to meet three Mr Thrumms, virtually identical in appearance though somewhat varied in habit. Each of them, seemingly, had been awarded the care and custody of Van Hoost rogues since the time, approximately, of Hermione. Buttercup’s own Mr Thrumm was named Raphael. The others, who visited from time to time, were Jonas and Cadmon. Buttercup came to understand that there had always been three Mr Thrumms, always so named. Whether these were the original or successor ones, she was never able to establish, and in fact she – including her