Gratitude is in fact an intensely tame word to express what he feels for Trixy’s munificent gift to him of herself. With all these feelings rife in his very broad breast, feelings that would gush forth eloquently in most men, Mr. Stubbs remains strictly practical and common-place, and fortunately his wife elect is better able to sympathise with him as he is than if Cupid spoke from his lips in flowers of rhetoric.
“And the furniture? From Jackson and Graham’s, I suppose?” he asks deprecatingly, as if it was her money and not his that was to pay for it.
“From Jackson and Graham’s of course! You surely are not thinking of going to Tottenham Court Road, Mr. Stubbs?” Trixy says raspily, with a little sniff of her Greek nose.
“No, no! of course not!” he murmurs alarmed.
“Remember, I cannot have any hangings but blue—blue suits my complexion, you know; not dark blue, mind, but bleu de ciel!”
“Blue, certainly,” he answers humbly, much more humbly probably than Jackson and Graham’s foreman would.
“And Mr. Stubbs, pray don’t forget that I hate anything modern. I like everything old, in furniture I mean!” she says, warming up with her subject. “Chippendale and all that sort of thing.”
“Florid carving you would like of course?”
“Florid! Horrid! Plain chairs, with shields at the back for the—— ”
She stops suddenly, while a look of disappointment and dismay creeps over her face.