“In a Mew. Or in a Studjo.... I suppose these are Originals.”
Christina Alberta awaited his reaction to the drawings with a slight anxiety.
“Looks like a lot of fruit and human legs and things,” said Mr. Preemby. “Wonder what they mean? Summer Night it says, and that’s Passion in Solitude. Don’t quite see it, but I suppose it’s symbolical or something.” He turned his round blue eyes to the room generally. “I could get a mahogany cabinet for my Curiosities and have it against the wall there—I’d like the sort with glass doors so that people could see the things—and if there was some shelves put across that place, it would hold most of my books. There’ll have to be a bed somewhere, Christina Alberta.”
“They’ve got a sofa upstairs,” said Christina Alberta, “with an end that pulls down.”
“Might go there.”
“Or under the window.”
“Of course there’s my clothes,” said Mr. Preemby. “I almost wish I hadn’t practically promised Sam Widgery your mother’s wardrobe. Rosewood it is. It has a lot of room in it and it might have gone against that bit of wall there. The trunk will make a sort of seat if we get the corners mended. Wonder how that screen would look the other way up. Books might go behind it. These easels and things I suppose they’ll take upstairs.... We’ll get things settled all right.”
Christina Alberta turned about with arms akimbo to follow his proposals. She perceived that they threatened a considerable disturbance of the æsthetic balance of the studio. She’d just thought of a little bed-sofa affair with a bright rug over it. Silly of her to forget the baggage. But in the end perhaps it might be possible to arrest a lot of his gear in the passage. The passage was so choked already that a little more in it hardly seemed to matter. He could go out and get what things he wanted when he wanted them. She had a momentary anticipation of him in his shirt and braces, routing in trunks.
“Of course,” said Mr. Preemby, “when you said you’d got two little friends in a Studjo, I thought they were two girls. I didn’t think they were a married couple.”
“They aren’t so fearfully married,” said Christina Alberta.