"Very well," my father overwhelmed us by saying; "if you want it, you shall have it."
He and my mother, it appeared, were going to Paris for a year, partly for the sake of my sister's education. They had already decided to give up the Kensington house, leaving Helen and me on our own. Our plans fitted in with theirs.
"You may call the house a belated wedding present," my father said.
In due time the agent and solicitors from far and near brought their endless papers, my father wrote out a check, we all signed our names a great many times, and the house was ours. Nor did my father's generosity stop there. Another check was handed to Helen. My father told her to furnish the house as well as she could with it. That evening Helen and I sat up half the night, making out lists of things. I wrote them down and Helen thought them out. Pots and pans seemed extraordinarily numerous. We were interrupted only by the younger Miss Helen demanding nourishment.
For the next two weeks we trudged up and down Tottenham Court Road shopping. Such discussions and arguments as Helen had with shop assistants; such checking of catalogues and comparing of prices! I suggested getting a lump price on the whole thing from one shop, thus simplifying the process. My commonsense suggestion was emphatically vetoed. It simply wasn't done that way—not when one furnished a house. I rather liked to sit on the edge of a counter and listen to Helen bullying young shopmen. I marvelled at her persistence, to say nothing of her obstinacy in getting them around to her demands. She accepted no provisos and exceptions. The daily struggle would have worn me out; she returned, to it fresh each morning, armed at all points cap-a-pie. Each evening we laid plans for the action of the following day. We were buying the minimum of furniture; the rest we hoped to pick up second-hand, old cottage tables and the like. We did, as a matter of fact, make one or two by-excursions down the Fulham Road to see the antique shops. We found the owners of these shops, however, too canny for our purposes. They fancied that Helen and I were American tourists and stuck their prices up accordingly.
The family listened with obvious amusement, during dinner each night, to our adventures and progress. They offered no advice, nor did we seek any, for we wanted to do it alone. Occasionally Helen and my mother conferred over the contents of the kitchen. Not everything bore the same name as in America. Helen had to ask what the English equivalents were.
Coming out of Kettner's one day in Soho, I observed a fascinating row of copper sauce-pans hanging in a smelly little French shop. I made Helen's growing equipment a present of this addition. "You can do me a poussin sauté, gran'mère, en casserole," I explained. It was Helen's turn to look a little vague.
We set the first of October as the date on which we hoped to move in. We were having the walls done and a kitchen range installed. Time was no object whatever to the group of men who had taken over these two jobs.
"Probably," I said to Helen, "they are enjoying a summer in the country."
"I hope they don't remain over for the hunting," she answered, thereby proving that she had begun to read Punch to some purpose.