‘Oh, I just thought you might have looked in.’
‘Is there anything new there?’
‘I dinna say there is, but—but just go and see.’
‘There can’t be anything new if you kept the door barred,’ I say cleverly.
This crushes her for a moment; but her eagerness that I should see is greater than her fear. I set off for the east room, and she follows, affecting humility, but with triumph in her eye. How often those little scenes took place! I was never told of the new purchase, I was lured into its presence, and then she waited timidly for my start of surprise.
‘Do you see it?’ she says anxiously, and I see it, and hear it, for this time it is a bran-new wicker chair, of the kind that whisper to themselves for the first six months.
‘A going-about body was selling them in a cart,’ my mother begins, and what followed presents itself to my eyes before she can utter another word. Ten minutes at the least did she stand at the door argy-bargying with that man. But it would be cruelty to scold a woman so uplifted.
‘Fifteen shillings he wanted,’ she cries, ‘but what do you think I beat him down to?’
‘Seven and sixpence?’
She claps her hands with delight. ‘Four shillings, as I’m a living woman!’ she crows: never was a woman fonder of a bargain.