When a king had chosen the design for the gold work of his signet and selected the stone, carefully studying its hue and markings, then came the making of the signet: the gold was put in the fire, and the gem under the lapidary's hammer.
CHAPTER III
A GARDEN LEVÉE
In a little over a year great alterations had been made in Ralph Waring's establishment. The shop next door had been duly taken, the partition wall broken down, and the grocery business started. The only part of Ralph's plan which had not come about was the throwing in of the back parlour into the business portion. "No," said Phebe firmly, "in this department I mean to come first. I am not going to vote for everything being sacrificed to the business; to have a dining-room upstairs means a great deal of extra work. I must also have the parlour of the other shop to convert into a decent kitchen. How can we expect Janie to be bright and happy with nothing better than a scullery to sit in? I mean my kitchen to be as bright and cheery as any room in the house."
"I wonder who's master here!" said Ralph, with a snap.
"We are partners—at least, that is what you have said, and you rule in one department and I in the other. I have no objection to you having one of the front rooms upstairs for a show-room." Ralph had never thought of that, and as it sounded rather "big," it pleased him, and so the dispute ended.
But if changes had been effected in the front premises, a greater change had come about in the back garden, which at first had only looked like a walled-in yard. Where the dandelions had grown was a trim little lawn, with a flower-stand in the centre nearly covered with pink ivy geraniums; there was no space for any elaboration of design, so a narrow bed of flowers round the lawn touched the surrounding walls, which were already nearly covered with shoots of ivy, climbing roses, and that industrious plant, Virginia creeper. In one corner a little arbour had been erected, and, till the climbing plants had completed the covering, a gay red-striped awning had been fixed up, adding still more colour to the scene.
Here one sunny August day Neighbour Bessie found her friend, Mrs. Waring, nursing her baby.
"Well, you do make a pretty picture! Talk of gold pictures in silver frames, you are a picture of love in a frame of flowers."