I was surprised, but still not surprised, for the drawing-room is awful! Big and square, and filled with heavy furniture, and a perfect shopful of ugly ornaments and bead mats, and little tables, and milking-stools, and tambourines, and bannerettes, and all the kind of things that were considered lovely ages ago, but which no self-respecting girl of our age could possibly endure. Lorna told me thrilling tales of her experience with that room.
“When I first came home, mother saw that I didn’t like it, so she said she knew quite well that she was old-fashioned and behind the times, and now that she had a grown-up daughter she would leave the arrangement of such things to her, and I could alter the room as much as ever I liked. So, my dear, I made Mary bring the biggest tray in the house, and I filled it three times over with gimcracks of all descriptions, and sent them up to the box-room cupboard. I kept about three tables instead of seven, with really nice things on them, and left a good sweep of floor on which you could walk about without knocking things down. I pulled out the piano from the wall, and lowered the pictures, and gathered all the old china together, and put it on the chimney-piece, and—and—oh, I can’t tell you all the alterations, but you would hardly have known it for the same room! It looked quite decent. When all was finished, I sent for mother, and she came in and sat down, and, my dear, she turned quite white! She kept looking round and round, searching for things where she had been accustomed to find them, and she looked as if something hurt her. I asked her if she didn’t like it, and she said—
“‘Oh, yes, it looks much more—more modern. Yes, dear, you have been very clever. It is quite—smart! A little bare, isn’t it—just a little bare, don’t you think?’
“‘No, mother,’ I said sternly, ‘not the least little bit in the world! It seems so to you because you have had it so crowded that there was no room to move, but you will soon get accustomed to the room as it is, and like it far better.’
“‘Yes, dear,’ she said meekly, ‘of—of course. I’m sure you are quite right,’ and will you believe it, Una, she went straight into her own room, and cried! I know she did, for I saw the marks on her face later on, and taxed her with it. She was very apologetic, but she said the little table with the gold legs had been father’s first gift to her after they were married, and she couldn’t bear to have it put aside; and the ivory basket under the glass shade had come from the first French Exhibition, and she had worked those bead bannerettes herself when I was teething, and threatened with convulsions, and she did not dare to leave the house. Of course, I felt a wretch, and hugged her, and said—
“‘Why didn’t you say so before? We will bring them back at once, and put them where they were; but you have not tender associations with all the things. You did not work that hideous patchwork cushion, for instance, and—’
“‘No, but Aunt Mary Ryley did,’ she cried eagerly, ‘and it is made out of pieces of all the dresses we wore when we were girls together. I often look at it and remember the happy times I had in the grey poplin and the puce silk.’
“So, of course, the cushion had to come back too, and by the end of a week every single thing was taken out of the cupboard, and put in its former place! They all had memories, and mother loved the memories, and cared nothing for the appearance. I was sweet about it. I wouldn’t say so to anyone but you, Una, but I really was quite angelic, until one day when Amy Reeve came to call. She was staying with some friends a few miles off, and drove in to see me. You know how inquisitive Amy is, and how she stares, and takes in everything, and quizzes it afterwards? Well, my dear, she sat there, and her eyes simply roved round and round the whole time, until she must have known the furniture by heart. I suffered,” sighed Lorna plaintively, “I suffered anguish! I wouldn’t have minded anyone else so much—but Amy!”
I said, (properly), that Amy was a snob and an idiot, and that it mattered less than nothing what she thought, but all the time I knew that I should have felt humiliated myself, and Lorna knew it, too, but was not vexed with me for pretending the contrary, for it is only right to set a good example.
“Of course,” she said, “one ought to be above such petty trials. If a friendship hangs upon chiffoniers and bead mats, it can’t be worth keeping. I have told myself so ever since, but human nature is hard to kill, and I should have liked the house to look nice when Amy called! I despise myself for it, but I foresee that that room is going to be a continual trial. Its ugliness weighs upon me, and I feel self-conscious and uncomfortable every time my friends come to call, but I am not going to attempt any more changes. I wouldn’t make the dear old mother cry again for fifty drawing-rooms!”