would all cost something.'

She dreamed again, calculating the cost of all the necessaries, and
Darnell stared anxiously; reckoning with her, and wondering what her
conclusion would be. For a moment the delicate colouring of her face,
the grace of her form, and the brown hair, drooping over her ears and
clustering in little curls about her neck, seemed to hint at a language
which he had not yet learned; but she spoke again.

'The bedding would come to a great deal, I am afraid. Even if Dick's are
considerably cheaper than Boon's or Samuel's. And, my dear, we must have
some ornaments on the mantelpiece. I saw some very nice vases at
eleven-three the other day at Wilkin and Dodd's. We should want six at
least, and there ought to be a centre-piece. You see how it mounts up.'

Darnell was silent. He saw that his wife was summing up against his
scheme, and though he had set his heart on it, he could not resist her
arguments.

'It would be nearer twelve pounds than ten,' she said.

'The floor would have to be stained round the carpet (nine by nine, you
said?), and we should want a piece of linoleum to go under the
washstand. And the walls would look very bare without any pictures.'

'I thought about the pictures,' said Darnell; and he spoke quite
eagerly. He felt that here, at least, he was unassailable. 'You know
there's the "Derby Day" and the "Railway Station," ready framed,
standing in the corner of the box-room already. They're a bit
old-fashioned, perhaps, but that doesn't matter in a bedroom. And
couldn't we use some photographs? I saw a very neat frame in natural oak
in the City, to hold half a dozen, for one and six. We might put in your
father, and your brother James, and Aunt Marian, and your grandmother,
in her widow's cap--and any of the others in the album. And then there's
that old family picture in the hair-trunk--that might do over the
mantelpiece.'

'You mean your great-grandfather in the gilt frame? But that's _very_
old-fashioned, isn't it? He looks so queer in his wig. I don't think it
would quite go with the room, somehow.'

Darnell thought a moment. The portrait was a 'kitcat' of a young
gentleman, bravely dressed in the fashion of 1750, and he very faintly
remembered some old tales that his father had told him about this
ancestor--tales of the woods and fields, of the deep sunken lanes, and
the forgotten country in the west.

'No,' he said, 'I suppose it is rather out of date. But I saw some