“There is something particularly displeasing to the Lord about display, Rose,” said Uncle Alfred, with his habitual assumption of being his Creator’s mouthpiece.
“I wonder what He thinks of the shop-window, then!” retorted Rose, with her tolerant, unmalicious tartness of repartee. “Well, Uncle A., if you won’t have coffee—and I suppose you won’t have whisky——”
(“I am ashamed of you,” said Uncle Alfred parenthetically.)
“—we shall have to do the best we can with tea, but I’m going to get some decent tea myself, and not that beastly black stuff that’s all twigs, and strangers-coming-from-overseas, and goodness knows what all.”
“If you choose to waste your money on tea, I cannot prevent it,” complacently said Mr. Smith.
“I suppose the Lord’ll look the other way, if it’s me and not you, that’s doing the display,” Rose observed, giggling.
It delighted her that Uncle Alfred should be obliged to pretend not to have heard her, in order to avoid the necessity of finding a reply.
“There’s one thing, it’s a lovely room,” said Rose to herself. “Of course the furniture isn’t like Squires, and never will be, but it’s good of its kind—that I will say. The upholstery is good, and I like crimson myself. That plant would do with a scrubbing, though.”
She pounced upon the aspidistra, and sent the little maid for soap and water and an old tooth-brush.
“I’d like it to look nice, Gladys, because a friend of mine is coming round this evening,” she explained.