Cornelia shook her head with melancholy decision. "It would be quite useless to do anything with the furniture," she declared, "if we didn't first change the carpet and the wall-paper."
Joanna was silent in apparent acquiescence; and Cornelia, after a moment's hesitation, brought out a still bolder proposition. "I've been thinking," she said "that we ought to have a piano. Of course I can't—we can't either of us play," she went on in hurried deprecation of Joanna's astonished looks, "poor Mamma would never let us take lessons; but people have them whether they play or not, and—it would give such a nice, musical look to the room."
Joanna sat lost for a moment in awe over this radical suggestion. "It would be very expensive," she said, practically "and—there are a great many things we need more."
But the more imaginative Cornelia refused to be daunted. "What if it is expensive!" she said boldly "and if we don't actually need it, that's all the more reason why it would be nice to have it. We've never spent money on a single thing in all our lives except for just what was necessary. Couldn't we for once have something that isn't necessary, that would be only—pleasant?"
Thus Cornelia struck the key-note of resistance to that doctrine of utility which had enslaved their lives, and Joanna, after the first shock of surprise, followed willingly in her lead. It was decided that the piano should be bought at once, and in discussing this and other changes, time passed rapidly, and they went to bed in a state of duly suppressed, but undoubted cheerfulness. It was altogether quite the pleasantest evening that they had spent for many years, though they would not have admitted this for the world, and sincerely believed themselves in great affliction. There was another being in the house who rejoiced in his freedom and meant to make the most of it.
The next morning at breakfast the sisters might have perceived had they been less engrossed in their own thoughts, that Peter was meditating some communication, which he found it hard to express. His words, when he spoke at last, chimed in oddly with his sisters' wishes. "I never," he said, speaking very deliberately and looking about him in great disgust, "I never saw a place that needed doing over so badly as this does."
There was a moment's pause of astonishment; and then Cornelia looked up in glad surprise. "Why, Peter," she said, "I had no idea that you would care"—
"Care!" said Peter, importantly. "Of course I care. I've always meant to have the place fixed up when—well, she couldn't live for ever, you know" he broke off half apologetically, as he caught the look of mute protest on his sisters' faces. "It did all very well for her and for you," he went on, coolly, "but it's not the sort of place I can bring my wife to." The last words came out with an air of indifference, that might have befitted the most commonplace announcement.
Upon Peter's hearers, however, they fell like a thunderbolt. It was several minutes before Cornelia repeated, in a very low voice:
"Your—your wife, Peter?"