"There are three things," said he, "that you certainly ought to have. A piano, and a reading-stand, and a comfortable sofa. You shall have them."
She threw back her head and closed her eyes to shut out the stupidity, and the mockery, and the misery of that idea.
"I—don't—want"—she spoke slowly. Her voice dropped from its high petulant pitch, and rounded to its funeral-bell note—"I don't want a piano, nor a reading-stand, nor a sofa. I simply want a place that I can call my own."
"But, bless you, the whole house is your own, if it comes to that, and every mortal thing in it. Everything I've got's yours except my razors and my braces, and a few little things of that sort that I'm keeping for myself."
She passed her hand over her forehead, as if to brush away the irritating impression of his folly.
"Come," he said, "let's begin. What do you want moved first? And where?"
She indicated a cabinet which she desired to have removed from its place between the windows to a slanting position in the corner. He was delighted to hear her express a preference, still more delighted to be able to gratify it by his own exertions. He took off his coat and waistcoat, turned up his shirt cuffs, and set to work. For an hour he laboured under her directions, struggling with pieces of furniture as perverse and obstinate as his wife, but more ultimately amenable.
When it was all over, Anne seated herself on the settee between the windows, and surveyed the scene. Majendie, in a rumpled shirt and with his hair in disorder, stood beside her, and smiled as he wiped the perspiration from his forehead.
"Yes," he said, "it's all altered. There isn't a blessed thing, not a chair, or a footstool, or a candlestick, that isn't in some place where it wasn't. And the room doesn't look a bit better, and you won't be a bit better pleased with it to-morrow."
He put on his coat and sat down beside her. "See here," said he, "you don't want me really to believe that that's where the trouble is?"