"Tell them," she said, "that Jimmy's going to be so horribly celebrated
that they'll look perfect asses if they don't acknowledge him."

I owned there was something in it. She said there was everything in it.
And I promised her I'd go and do what I could.

Then I went upstairs to help Jevons to finish his man's job. I found him
in the bedroom, making up a bed on the floor. The carpenter had taken
away the bedstead and the posts and left him nothing but the mattress and
the tester with its roof of rosebud chintz. He had propped the tester up
against the wall where he said he could see it last thing before he went
to sleep and first thing when he woke up.

The room was very hot, for he'd lit the gas fire to air the sheets and
things. He had thought of everything. He had even thought of hanging
Viola's nightgown over the back of a chair before the fire, and setting
her slippers ready for her feet. He had laid her brush and comb on the
little rosewood chest of drawers with brass handles, in the recess. He
had unpacked her little trunk and put her things away all folded in the
big rosewood chest of drawers with brass handles. He had hung the rosebud
chintz curtains at the window and fitted its rosebud chintz cover on
the low chair by the fire. And now he was kneeling on the floor, tucking
in the blankets and smoothing the pillow for her head. His mouth was just
a little open. And he was smiling.

You couldn't hate him.

He said he'd come and see me off at the Tube Station. But he didn't
start. He began walking about, opening drawers and looking at things.

Presently he gave a cry of joy. He had found what he was looking for, a
rosebud chintz coverlet. He spread it on the bed and said, "There!" He
brought in an old Persian rug (small but very beautiful) from the landing
and spread it on the floor by the mattress and said, "That's a bit of all
right." And he told me he was going to beeswax the floor to-morrow. There
was nothing to beat oak-stain and beeswax for a floor.

He stood there gazing. He was so pleased with his work that he couldn't
tear himself away.

He said, "The joke is that she thinks she's going to find this room
looking like a Jew pawnbroker's shop when, she turns in, and that she'll
have the time of her life putting it straight for _me_."

Then he took my arm and led me away, shutting the door carefully, so that
nothing, he said, should break the shock of her surprise.

But there was one drop of b