“What! Another day! Another day still! But you’re strangely indifferent to time, in your line of business. Oh! Tomorrow! Imagine it! Two days late already, and then tomorrow! Well I hope by tomorrow you mean Wednesday, and not tomorrow’s tomorrow, or some other absurd and fanciful date that you’ve just thought about. But now, do have the thing finished by tomorrow—” here he laid his hand cajoling on Arthur’s arm. “You promise me it will all be ready by tomorrow, don’t you?”
“Yes, I’ll do it if anybody could do it.”
“Don’t say ‘if anybody could do it.’ Say it shall be done.”
“It shall if I can possibly manage it—”
“Oh—very well then. Mind you manage it—and thank you very much. I shall be most obliged, if it is done.”
Arthur was annoyed, but he was kept to the scratch. And so, early in October the place was ready, and Woodhouse was plastered with placards announcing “Houghton’s Pleasure Palace.” Poor Mr. May could not but see an irony in the Palace part of the phrase. “We can guarantee the pleasure,” he said. “But personally, I feel I can’t take the responsibility for the palace.”
But James, to use the vulgar expression, was in his eye-holes.
“Oh, father’s in his eye-holes,” said Alvina to Mr. May.
“Oh!” said Mr. May, puzzled and concerned.
But it merely meant that James was having the time of his life. He was drawing out announcements. First was a batch of vermilion strips, with the mystic script, in big black letters: Houghton’s Picture Palace, underneath which, quite small: Opens at Lumley on October 7th, at 6:30 P.M. Everywhere you went, these vermilion and black bars sprang from the wall at you. Then there were other notices, in delicate pale-blue and pale red, like a genuine theatre notice, giving full programs. And beneath these a broad-letter notice announced, in green letters on a yellow ground: “Final and Ultimate Clearance Sale at Houghton’s, Knarborough Road, on Friday, September 30th. Come and Buy Without Price.”