ring and bought Thomas some pretty cambric clothes and
a rocking cradle. He had nothing else much to pawn. But he badly wanted
some Japanese paintings to put in the place of the pictures that at
present adorned the sitting-room. Thomas and he must have something nice
and gay to look at, instead of the Royal Family and the Monarch of the
Glen and "Grace Sufficient" worked in crewels. So he went into a shop in
Holborn and chose some paintings, and ordered them to be sent up, and
said, "Please enter them to me," so firmly that they did. Having done
that once, he repeated it at several other shops, and sometimes they
obeyed him and sometimes said that goods could not be sent up without
pre-payment. Pre-payment (or, indeed, as far as Peter could look forward,
post-payment) being out of the question, those goods had to be left where
they were. But Peter, though handicapped by shabby attire, had an
engaging way with him, and most shopmen are trustful and obliging. If
they lost by the transaction, thought Peter recklessly, it was their turn
to lose, not his. It was his turn to acquire, and he had every intention
of doing so. He had a glorious evening, till the shops shut. Then he went
home, and found that the daffodils had come, and he filled the room with
them, converting its dingy ugliness into a shining glory. Then he took
down all the horrible pictures and texts and stacked them behind the
sofa, awaiting the arrival of the Japanese paintings. He thought Thomas
would like the paintings as much as he did himself. Their room in future
should be a bright and pleasant place, fit for human beings to live in.
He cleared the chimney-piece of its horrid, tinkling ornaments to leave
space for his brown pottery jars full of daffodils. He put the ornaments
with the pictures behind the sofa, and when the Girl came in with his
supper requested her at her leisure to remove them.

"I have been getting some new pictures, you see," he told her, and was
annoyed at the way her round eyes widened. Why shouldn't he get as many
new pictures as he chose, without being gaped at?

There was more gaping next day, when his purchases were sent up. He had
warned his landlady and the Girl beforehand, that they might not tell the
messengers it must be a mistake and send them away, on what would, no
doubt be their stupid and impertinent impulse. So they gaped and took
them in, and Peter hurried back early from his work and fetched Thomas
in to watch him o