“When shall I get the things ready? For next Sunday?
“What will it cost?
“Oh, there - don’t talk of it. No: we won’t go. I shall send for the painters to-morrow. What?
“I can go and take the children, and you’ll stay?
“No, sir: you go with me, or I don’t stir. I’m not going to be turned loose like a hen with her chickens, and nobody to protect me. So we’ll go on Monday? Eh?
“What will it cost?
“What a man you are! Why, Caudle, I’ve been reckoning that, with buff slippers and all, we can’t well do it under seventy pounds. No; I won’t take away the slippers and say fifty. It’s seventy pounds and no less. Of course, what’s over will be so much saved. Caudle, what a man you are! Well, shall we go on Monday? What do you say -
“You’ll see?
“There’s a dear. Then, Monday.”
“Anything for a chance of peace,” writes Caudle. “I consented to the trip, for I thought I might sleep better in a change of bed.”