“Because that would very quickly degenerate into mother’s At Home day, and you know what mother’s At Home day means—seven women, two girls, and half a man. No, if we have an At Home day of our own, it must be in our own room. I’ll tell you what we’ll do, Maudie, we’ll go up to town and choose a little piano somewhere, the kind of piano that you see in the Army and Navy Stores’ list as suitable for yachts, and we’ll pay for it out of our allowance.”
“But we can’t.”
“Yes, we can. We can take three years to pay for it. If we spend thirty pounds on a piano, that’s quite enough. People can’t walk into your room and ask you whether your piano cost thirty pounds or ninety pounds. It wouldn’t be very much out of our allowance for each of us to pay fifteen pounds in three years—only five pounds a year—then the piano will be ours.”
“And suppose one of us gets married?” asked Maudie.
“Well, if one of us gets married, she must leave it for the other one.”
“And the other one?”
“Well, if the other one gets married, she must leave it for the use of the home.”
“Oh, I see.”
“Well,” said Julia, briskly, putting down the book that she held in her hand, “let us go into the playroom and just cast our eyes over its capabilities.”
So the two girls went off to their old playroom, which was just as they had left it when they had departed for their school in Paris two years before.