shall
never take up paper-hanging as a profession.

The hanging itself is really rather exciting. Midas climbed to the top
of the ladder and held the top of the strip in position; Lorna crouched
beneath, and guided it in the way it should go, so as to meet the edge
of the one before, and I stood on a chair and smoothed it down and down
with a clean white cloth. Doing it with great care like this, we got no
wrinkles at all, and when the first side of the room was finished, it
looked so professional that we danced--literally danced--for joy.

By the end of the afternoon it was done, and so were we! Simply so
tired we could hardly stand, but mentally we were full of triumph, for
that room was a picture to behold. We ran out into the passage and
brought in everyone we could find, servants and charwoman included.
Then they made remarks, and we stood and listened.

The cook said, "My, Miss Lorna, wouldn't the pattern go round?" The
charwoman said, "I like a bit of gilding meself. It looks 'andsome."
The parlourmaid said, "How will the furniture look against it, miss?"
which was really the nastiest hit of all; only the little Tweeny stared
and flushed, and rolled her hands in her apron, and said, "All them
roses on the wall! It would be like a Bank-'oliday to sit aside 'em!"

Tweeny has the soul of a poet. I bought her some flowers the very next
time I went out. Wallace came in and twiddled his moustache, and said--

"By Jove, is it really done! Aren't you dead beat? I say, Miss
Sackville, don't do any more to-day. It's too bad of Lorna to work you
like this. I shall interfere in my professional capacity."

He was far too much engrossed in Una Sackville to have any eyes for the
paper.

Mrs Forbes thought, like the cook, that it was a pity that the pattern
didn't go round; and the dear old doctor tip-toed up and down, jingled
the money in his pockets, and said--

"Eh, what? Eh, what? Something quite novel, eh! Didn't go in for
things of this sort in my young days. Very smart indeed, my dear, very
smart! Now I suppose you will be wanting some new fixings," (his hand
came slowly out of his waistcoat pocket, and my hopes ran mountains
high). "Mustn't spoil the ship for a penn'orth of tar, you know.
There, that will help to buy a few odds and ends."

He put something into Lorna's hand; she looked at it, flushed red with
delight, and hugged him rapturously round the neck. After he had gone
she showed it