I was so out of breath for a moment that I couldn’t speak.
“Then,” continued my dear friend, “I wanted those card and occasional tables, but couldn’t get them; they bought the dinner-service, too, at six ten, and the china for seven pounds. Then I took a strong fancy to that wool mattress, but of course I wasn’t going to give five guineas for it. It certainly was a beautifully soft and thick one, but one could buy it new for the money, or less.”
“Did you bid for any of the plate?” I gasped in husky tones.
“Well, ’pon my word, old chap, I’m half ashamed to own it, but I really was stupid enough to go as far as eleven and sixpence an ounce for it—which is an absurd price, you know. But there, thank goodness! I’ve escaped, for I haven’t bought a single lot.”
I did not speak for quite five minutes, for the simple reason that I could not. What was I to do, or what was I to say? I wanted to call him names, and take him by the collar to shake him till his teeth chattered. But who could so treat a guest?
“Let’s go up and have some tea,” I said at last, very hoarsely; and then, recovering myself, I stopped him, for I felt sure he would begin talking upstairs, while Mrs Scribe, on the subject being broached, would ask—what as yet she had not had opportunity for—what I had secured.
“Stop a minute, Tom,” I said. “Don’t say a word about the sale upstairs.”
He looked at me strangely, and kept his counsel as well as mine—and not a single word has since passed our lips; but in after days, when dining at our house in company with his wife, I have seen his eyes wander from the Turkey carpet to the dinner-service, and again, in the drawing-room, from the occasional tables to the china tea-cups and saucers; and then he has glanced darkly at me, with the look of a found-out conspirator, and I have looked darkly at him. But, no, not even to the wife of my bosom have I ever unburdened myself respecting the prices I paid for the new acquisitions to our furnishing department. While as to that five-guinea wool mattress, I could almost swear that, whoever stuffed it, stuffed in the miserable sheep’s trotters and bones, for whenever by chance we have slept in the visitors’ room, upon airing principles, I have always felt lumps right through the feather bed.
“No, my love, the price has nothing to do with you,” I said, while being cross-questioned. “You have the things, so you ought to be satisfied.”