“Then I’ll make a good selection, and have them sent home for you to choose from,” she replied, her face suffused with that joy-radiance that invariably overtakes a woman who starts out shopping with a blank cheque in her handbag.
She certainly did make a good selection; I almost wished it hadn’t been quite so good, then at least I should have known what to send back. But as it was, every fresh box I opened, I exclaimed, “Isn’t that lovely! I must have that!” till presently the room was a billowy sea of tissue paper and beautiful garments that looked as though hands had never touched them. I thought I was quite hardened and proof against lures of this kind; but the snare of it simply enmeshes you before you know where you are. As my bedroom was soon full to overflowing, I said the rest of the things had better go into a spare room. Very soon the spare rooms were full too. And so we went on like that!
Why didn’t I put the things away in drawers and wardrobes? Simply because every such receptacle I possessed was full to distraction before the trousseau things started to arrive! Did you ever know a woman who possessed a drawer or a wardrobe peg that wasn’t already over full, and she pining for more space? So for weeks we had to hop over piles of cardboard boxes no matter what room we entered, and scrabble up more bales of tissue paper and things to make room on the sofa for the friend who called to bring her good wishes in person.
Still, I have always thought that a strong argument in favour of a woman getting married is the fact that she, presumably, comes in for additional drawers and wardrobes. Hence I looked forward to getting into my new home with considerable satisfaction in view of the purchase of extra furniture.
“Yes, I know it’s a bit crowded just now,” I agreed, when Virginia suggested I should set up a shop with “Modes et Robes” over the door, because she had estimated that I shouldn’t need to buy any tissue paper for eleven years and five months. “But I shall have heaps of spare room when I get into the new house; I really shan’t know what to do with so many chests of drawers!”
But alas! in spite of the additional furniture, I am still squeezing things into drawers that would be so much more useful if made of elastic india-rubber instead of wood. And I am still flattening garments into wardrobes that are so bulgingly full that I wonder sometimes whether the looking-glass will stand the inside pressure. And still I don’t seem to have a rag fit to wear.
But the moving process was even worse than the trousseau. The very thought of it was turning my brain to stone.
When I mentioned my quakings about the moving to the Head of Affairs, he said airily, “Don’t you give a solitary thought to that. Just go away for a couple of days’ holiday, and when you come back you will find everything as right as can be in the new house. You don’t need to touch a thing or pack an atom. The men do everything. Now, why bother your head with unnecessary worrying?” etc.
I seemed to think I had heard the same remark made in the dim past when we removed from one house to another in my early days. I also remember that the brother of Virginia and Ursula said the very same thing to them when they moved, and they, acting on masculine advice, had the greatest difficulty, ultimately, in ever finding any solitary thing they possessed (including themselves) among the ruins. So I decided to postpone the couple of days’ holiday and face the worst.
There is no need to go into details about that move. Those who have been through it know exactly how many months it takes to find such things as the corkscrew, the buttonhook, the oil-can belonging to the sewing-machine, the one hammer that has its head fixed on firmly.