Hubert wiped the dust from his hands and coat-sleeves.
'What a lot of things you have given me! Now we shall be able to get on nicely with our furnishing.'
'What furnishing?'
'The furnishing of the little house in London where Julia and I are going to live. You said you intended to add a hundred a year to the three hundred a year which Mr. Burnett should have left me; I don't see why you should do such a thing, but if you do we shall have four hundred a year to live upon. Julia says that we shall then be able to afford to give fifty pounds a year for a house. We can get a very nice little house, she says, for that—of course, in one of the suburbs. The great expense will be the furnishing; we are going to do it on the hire system. I daresay one can get very nice things in that way, but I do want to make the place look a little like Ashwood; that is why I'm asking you for these things. I was always fond of playing in these old lumber-rooms, and these dim old pictures, which I don't think any one knows anything of except myself, will remind me of Ashwood. They will look very well, indeed, hanging round our little dining-room. You are sure you don't want them, do you?'
'No; I won't want them. I'm only too pleased to be able to give them to you.'
'You are very good, indeed you are. Look at these old haymakers; I never saw but one little corner of this picture before; it was stowed away behind a lot of lumber, and I hadn't the strength to pull it out.... I'm afraid you've got yourself rather dusty.'
'Oh no; it will brush off.'
'I shall hang this picture over the fireplace; it will look very well there. I daresay you don't see anything in it, but I'd sooner have these pictures than those down-stairs. I love the picture of the windmill on the first landing——'
'Then why not have it? I'll have it taken down at once.'
'No; I could not think of taking it. How would the landing look without it? I should miss it dreadfully when I came here—for I daresay you will ask us to visit you occasionally, when you are lonely, won't you?'