"I shan't want to leave," she said. "It already seems like home."
It seemed more and more a home as their preparations went forward. They were not supposed to enter into formal possession till late in August, but the complaisant owner gave Paul a key some weeks before and made no objection to their moving in anything they pleased. So it fell out that their modest six-rooms-and-bath in the Lorna Doone became in a way a sanctuary to which they went evenings when they could, and made beautiful according to their light.
It was a precious experience. Such wise planning it involved! Such ardent scanning of advertisements, such sweet toil of shopping, such rich rewards in midsummer bargains! They did not appreciate the magnitude of their needs till an out-of-the-way store, which fashion never patronized, put them concretely before their eyes in a window display. In successive show-windows, each as large as any of their rooms at the Lorna Doone, this enterprising firm had deployed a whole furnished flat. Furthermore, they had peopled it. In the parlor, which one saw first, a waxen lady in a yellow tea-gown sat embroidering by the gas-log, while over against her lounged a waxen gentleman in velvet smoking-jacket and slippers—a most inviting domestic picture, even though its atmosphere was somewhat cluttered with price-marks.
"That's you and me," said Paul, tenderly ungrammatical.
Jean was less romantically preoccupied.
"I'd quite forgotten curtains," she mused. "They'll take a pretty penny."
Thereupon the dentist discovered things which he had overlooked.
"We must have a bookcase," he said. "That combination case and desk certainly looks swell. What say to one like it?"
"Have you any books?"
"I should smile. I've got together the best little dental library you can buy."