if she had inadvertently touched a snake.
Mary's red face went purple as she explained that there was not space
in that house for a dressing-room. There was space enough going to
waste in the drawing-room, where Deb had her feelings hurt on her
second visit. It was a very large room, sharing the front of the house
with a large study; and behind them all the other rooms huddled as of
no account, none of them bigger than Keziah's Redford storeroom. The
study was sacred to the master of the house; the drawing-room to
"company". One look showed Deb that Mary never sat there, and that it
was not she who had chosen and arranged the furniture. The foundation
of the scheme was a costly "suite", upholstered in palish silk brocade,
the separate pieces standing at fixed intervals apart on a gorgeous
Axminster carpet. When Deb entered the room, Mr Goldsworthy was bending
over the central sofa, excited and talking loudly. Miss Goldsworthy and
Mary stood by, mute and drooping; Ruby looked on irresponsibly, with
joy in her eye.

"What's the matter?" inquired Deb, advancing.

As she was not a great lady then, but quite the contrary, Mr
Goldsworthy explained what was the matter, with scarcely any
modification of his minatory air. A caller had called yesterday,
bringing with her a little boy. Mary had thoughtlessly fed the little
boy with soft cake, and the little boy had first made his hands sticky
with it, and then pawed the sofa, which had cost him (B.G.) nearly
twenty pounds (part of Mary's 500 pounds). Greasy marks had been left
on that lovely brocade, for which he (not she) had given thirty-five
shillings a yard, and which he had forbidden children to be allowed to
sit on. As if that were not bad enough, "they"--i.e., those two poor
women--had, without telling him, tried to take the marks out with some
wretched chemist's stuff, which had not taken them out, but only spread
them more. Now the sofa was completely spoiled, and what to do he did
not know, unless he could match the brocade, which was scarcely likely.
And ill could he afford to be buying brocade--and so on. Finally he
went out to consult with a furniture repairer of his acquaintance,
banging doors behind him. Deb cast a scornful glance upon the smudged
brocade.

"What a fuss about nothing!" she brushed the subject by.

"My brother is very particular about this room," Miss Goldsworthy
apologised for him.

"So I see."

"And he is very fond of this brocade, which h