“Anything of a shabby nature is repugnant to me!” said her aunt firmly. “Sir Edward would not have approved of it.”
“But, ma’am, I daresay he would not have approved of your keeping a gaming-house at all!” Deborah pointed out.
“Very likely not, my love. I’m sure it is not at all the sort of thing I should choose to do, but if Ned didn’t wish me to do so he should not have died in that inconsiderate way,” said Lady Bellingham.
Miss Grantham abandoned this line of argument, and returned to her study of the bills. Such items as Naples Soap, Patent Silk Stockings, Indian Tooth-brushes, and Chintz Patches, mounted up to a quite alarming total; while a bill from Warren’s, Perfumiers, and another from a mantua maker, enumerating such interesting items as One Morning Sacque of Paris Mud, Two Heads Soupir d’etouffer, and One Satin Cloak trimmed Opera Brulée Gauze, made her feel quite low. But these were small bills compared with the staggering list of household expenses, which it was evident Lady Bellingham had been trying to calculate. Her ladyship’s sprawling handwriting covered several sheets of hot-pressed paper, whereon Servants’ Wages, Liveries, Candles, Butcher, Wine, and Taxes jostled one another in hopeless confusion. The house in St James’s Square seemed to cost a great deal of money to maintain, and if there were nothing to cavil at in the Wages of Four Women Servants, £60, it did seem that two waiters at twenty pounds apiece, an Upper Man at fifty-five, and the coachman at forty were grossly extortionate.
Miss Grantham folded these depressing papers, and put them at the bottom of the sheaf.
“I am sure I am ready enough to live a great deal more frugally,” said Lady Bellingham, “but you may see for yourself, Deb, how impossible it is! It is not as though one was spending money on things which are not necessary.”
“I suppose,” said Deborah, looking unhappily at a bill from the upholsterers, “I suppose we need not have covered all the chairs in the front saloon with straw-coloured satin.”
“No,” conceded Lady Bellingham. “I believe that was a mistake. It does not wear at all well, and I have been thinking whether we should not have them done again, in mulberry damask. What do you think, my love?”
“I think we had better not spend any more money on them until the luck changes,” said Deborah.
“Well, my dear, that will be an economy at all events,” said her ladyship hopefully. “But have you thought that if the luck don’t change-?”