“I’m beginning to doubt,” repeated Mollie solemnly, “whether it is half so amusing to be rich as it is to be poor. When you can get everything you want the moment you want it, you don’t appreciate it half so much as when you have pined for it, and saved up your pennies for it, for months beforehand. When we get a new thing at home, the whole family pay visits to it like a shrine, and we open the door and go into the room where it is, one after the other, to study the effect, and gloat over it. It is fun; isn’t it, now? Confess that it is!”
“Ye–es,” agreed Mrs Thornton doubtfully. “But where you have to wait too long, the sense of humour gets a little bit blunted, especially as one grows older, Mollie dear!”
She sighed as she spoke, and her eyes roved pensively round the discoloured walls, those same walls whose condition had fired Mollie to make her unsuccessful appeal. The girl’s thoughts went back to that embarrassing interview, not altogether regretfully, since it had ended in bringing about a better understanding between her uncle and herself. Perhaps, though he had refused her request, it would linger in his mind, and lead to good results. Nothing but the unexpected was certain about Uncle Bernard.
The next afternoon the vicarage drawing-room presented a rather chaotic appearance, as Mrs Thornton and her assistants prepared the important couches. Ruth sat in the middle of the floor running up lengths of brightly coloured muslins on a sewing-machine, while the other two wrestled with the difficulties which attend all make-shifts. With the greatest regard for ease and luxury, the beds were pronounced decidedly too low to look genuine, and the rickety legs had to be propped up with foundations manufactured out of old bound volumes of magazines, bricks from the garden, and an odd weight or two from the kitchen scales. The sofa-blankets also turned out to be too narrow, and persisted in disclosing the iron legs, until, in desperation, one end was sewn to the mattress, allowing the full width to hang down in front.
At last the work was finished, and the hot and dishevelled workers retired to the hall, and, re-entering the room to study the effect, in true Farrell manner, pronounced the “divans” to look professional beyond all fear of detection.
The next achievement was to place a tapering bank of plants against a discoloured patch of wallpaper, and many and varied were the struggles before the necessary stand was arranged. Eventually an old desk formed the bottom tier, a stool the second, and the baby’s high chair the third and last. Draped with an old piece of green baize, with small pots of trailing Tradescantia fitted into the crossbars of the chair, and the good old family Aspidistras (“as old as Mabel!” explained Mrs Thornton, stroking one of the long green leaves affectionately) taking the place of honour, the effect was so superior and luxurious that the vicar had to be dragged from his study to exclaim and admire.
“There, just look at our divans! Did you ever see anything look more luxurious? Who could ever suspect they were only a make-up? Sit down and see how comfortable this is!” cried Mrs Thornton volubly; whereupon the vicar sat down heavily in the centre of the seat, and promptly descended to the floor amidst a heaped-up pile of bedding, pillows, Sunday at Homes, and broken bricks.
He gasped and groped wildly with his hands, and the sight of him sitting prone among the ruins was so comical that both girls went off into peals of laughter. The humorous side of the accident was not, however, quite so apparent to the mistress of the ceremonies.
“That tiresome, tiresome bed! I might have known as much! It used to collapse with me regularly when I was nursing Mabel with scarlet-fever!” she cried impatiently. “Now we shall have to begin from the beginning, and make it up again. How tiresome of you, Arthur, to be so heavy!”
“I will spare you the obvious retort, dear. Let us be thankful that I was the victim, and not Lady Elstree, whom you would certainly have escorted to the seat of honour to-morrow. If you will allow me to help, I think I could manage to make things fast.”