'Oh,' said Ross, and tried one. 'Why, Sam, this is a brain wave. I can light my own pipe.'
'Can you, sir,' said Sam, going away contented. He is so thoughtful in those little ways. He gives Ross such a very perfect service. Sam never attempts to serve two masters. He is wholehearted for his one.
After lunch Ross said that he didn't feel up to going out, and that his "Rev. Mother" wanted him to lie down and take some soothing syrup.
'And are you going to?' I asked.
'Of course I'm not. Do you think I always do what Brown says. The 'Rev. Mother's' the one that will do the lying down,' said my brother grimly.
So I went over to the Gidger's cottage and found it full of ladders, paint-pots, pails of white-wash, workmen knocking down partitions, while 'Uncle John,' his hair and whiskers bristling like a wild man of the woods, whirls in and out like a dog at a fair, glorying in all the mess and confusion. Now that the house is mine, I go round anxiously and point out the flaws and cracks in the walls, and 'Uncle John' says soothingly, 'Oh, yes, mum, it only wants a bit o' mortar, it won't cost you much,' 'a bit o' mortar' is his panacea for all ills. He says the roof is sound except over the powdering closet, which may give trouble, no doubt 'a bit o' mortar will set it right.'
The two partitions are down and the doorways unblocked so that I can now walk through my entire domain without going out in the garden, over the fence and in at the other front door. All the rooms have had one coat of distemper and the drawing-room is finished. The pale cream walls are quite delightful and cry out for water-colours in gold mounts and frames, the oak floors have been beautifully polished, and joy, there are three Persian rugs in the Depository. To-day I bought a pair of plain old iron dogs to rest the logs on in the open fireplace. The casement curtains are to be made of the anemone besprinkled chintz with frills along the top. But, alas, the little curtains cut into more yards of stuff than one would think, and so I must have others in the bedrooms. I went into a shop to-day and asked the man to show me dimity.
'Dimity,' said he with a supercilious stare, 'dimity, why, good gracious, it's a hundred years old, madam.'
'But my house,' I said with quiet scorn, 'must be at least two hundred and fifty.'
I bought a seventeenth century settee and some deep chairs when I was up in town. They have loose covers made of chintz with a design of birds and baskets printed from the original old wood blocks.