“Nine pounds, eight and sixpence, ma’am.”
“Really. Nine pounds, eight and sixpence. It’s a splendid chair.”
“It is indeed, ma’am. We’ve sold more than two dozen of this same article in this last fortnight. A great demand just now.”
“And so there ought to be—more than two dozen! Well, I’m not surprised—an excellent chair.”
“Perhaps we can send it for you? Or you prefer—?”
“No, thank you. Not to-day. But I must say that it’s wonderful for the money. That sofa over there—”
Up here, in this world of solid furniture, it seemed that England was indeed a country to be proud of! Mrs. Trenchard would have made no mean Britannia, seated in one of the Stores’ arm-chairs with a Stores’ curtain-rod for her trident!
Upon this January afternoon she found her way to the furniture department more swiftly than was usual with her. The Stores seemed remote from her to-day. As she passed the hams, the chickens, the medicines and powders, the petticoats and ribbons and gloves, the books and the stationery, the cut-glass and the ironware, the fancy pots, the brass, the Chinese lanterns, the toys, the pianos and the gramophones, the carpets and the silver, the clocks and the pictures, she could only be dimly aware that to-day these things were not for her, that all the treasures of the earth might be laid at her feet and she would not care for them, that all the young men and young women in England might bow and smile before her and she would have no interest nor pleasure in them. She reached the furniture department. She sank down in the red-leather arm-chair. She said, with a little sigh:
“She has never forgotten before!”
This was, considering her surroundings and the moment of its expression, the most poignant utterance of her life.