"Yes, dear, she does! They all do. You give them a lot of extra work already, and all these things you have been buying lately—oh, Arthur, if you wouldn't buy things!—mean more work. You know that copper coal-scuttle you sent in yesterday?"
"Well, isn't it a beauty?—a real Georgian piece!" cried Meadows, indignantly.
"I dare say it is. But it has to be cleaned. When it arrived Jane came to see me in this room, shut the door, and put her back against it 'There's another of them beastly copper coal-scuttles come!' You should have seen her eyes blazing. 'And I should like to know, ma'am, who's going to clean it—'cos I can't.' And I just had to promise her it might go dirty."
"Lazy minx!" said Meadows, good-humouredly, with his mouth full of tea-cake. "At last I have something good to look at in this room." He turned his eyes caressingly towards the new coal-scuttle. "I suppose I shall have to clean it myself!"
Doris laughed again—this time almost hysterically—but was checked by a fresh entrance of Jane, who, with an air of defiance, deposited a heavy parcel on a chair beside her mistress, and flounced out again.
"What is this?" said Doris in consternation. "Books? More books? Heavens, Arthur, what have you been ordering now! I couldn't sleep last night for thinking of the book-bills."
"You little goose! Of course, I must buy books! Aren't they my tools, my stock-in-trade? Haven't these lectures justified the book-bills a dozen times over?"
This time Arthur Meadows surveyed his wife in real irritation and disgust.
"But, Arthur!—you could get them all at the London Library—you know you could!"
"And pray how much time do I waste in going backwards and forwards after books? Any man of letters worth his salt wants a library of his own—within reach of his hand."