After church there was an early dinner of some baked meat, prepared by Mrs. Jeffson. Isabel did not take much notice of what she ate. She was at that early period of life when a young person of sentimental temperament scarcely knows roast beef from boiled veal; but she observed that there were steel forks on the surgeon's table,—steel forks with knobby horn handles suggestive of the wildest species of deer,—and a metal mustard-pot lined with blue glass, and willow-pattern plates, and a brown earthenware jug of home-brewed beer; and that everything was altogether commonplace and vulgar.
After dinner Mrs. Gilbert amused herself by going over the house with her husband. It was a very tolerable house, after all; but it wasn't pretty; it had been inhabited by people who were fully satisfied so long as they had chairs to sit upon, and beds to sleep on, and tables and cups and plates for the common purposes of breakfast, dinner, and supper, and who would have regarded the purchase of a chair that was not intended to be sat upon, or a cup that was never designed to be drunk out of, as something useless and absurd, or even, in an indirect manner, sinful, because involving the waste of money that might be devoted to a better use.
"George," said Isabel, gently, when she had seen all the rooms, "did you never think of re-furnishing the house?"
"Re-furnishing it! How do you mean, Izzie?"
"Buying new furniture, I mean, dear. This is all so old-fashioned."
George the conservative shook his head.
"I like it all the better for that, Izzie," he said; "it was my father's, you know, and his father's before him. I wouldn't change a stick of it for the world. Besides, it's such capital substantial furniture; they don't make such chairs and tables nowadays."
"No," Izzie murmured with a sigh; "I'm very glad they don't."
Then she clasped her hands suddenly upon his arm, and looked up at him with her eyes opened to their widest extent, and shining with a look of rapture.
"Oh, George," she cried, "there was an ottoman in one of the shops at Conventford with seats for three people, and little stands for people to put their cups and saucers upon, and a place in the middle for FLOWERS! And I asked the price of it,—I often ask the price of things, for it's almost like buying them, you know,—and it was only eleven pounds ten, and I dare say they'd take less; and oh, George, if you'd make the best parlour into a drawing-room, and have that ottoman in the centre, and chintz curtains lined with rose-colour, and a white watered paper on the walls, and Venetian shutters outside—"