When it came to decorative inessentials we were cautious. Pictures, for example. It is very difficult to buy pictures for other people, as every one who has ever been in a hotel sitting-room will agree. Yet there were those great bare, white distempered walls.
The pictures being an acute problem, Ben, with deep cunning, left them to me.
"But I haven't seen your Barclay Corbet," I said. "A man can be anything in the world until you've seen him. How can I choose? Does he look like a hunting man?"
"No."
"That shuts out sets of coloured Alkens, which might be just the thing for such a place: Alken, Sartorius, Ben Marshall, all those fine old horsy fellows. Does he suggest exotic tastes?" I asked.
"No."
"That's puts a stopper on Japanese prints—as a rule such a safe line! And oil paintings would cost too much. And mezzotints of beautiful women, after Reynolds and Gainsborough, also dear, might not please him."
It was then that Mr. Harford came to the rescue. "If he likes Bibury so much," he said, "it follows that he must like Old England. I'll frame up a lot of our water-colours—De Wint, Birket Foster, William Callow, Tom Collier, David Cox, Varley—and if he likes them he can keep them, and if not I'll take them back. And now I come to think of it, he wanted to buy my dog, the swine! Called him a flea-trap! I've got some engravings of spaniels and setters after Stubbs—I'll hang those in the hall."
We settled the books in the same way. A certain number were decided upon without any question, such as the "Encyclopædia Britannica," Dickens and Thackeray, and then a mixed collection was put together by Mr. St. Quentin: to be retained or returned. All were supplied by that enterprising firm "The Booklovers' Rest" on the principle, as Ben said, of keeping Mr. Corbet in the family.