(“Here’s a piece that wants a stitch too.) But oh, Cosimo, isn’t that going rather too far? Dorothy—and Jellies——!”
“Not far enough,” Cosimo averred stoutly. “The cases are exactly on all-fours. We know what Dorothy is, but we don’t know what Jellies might not have been if she’d had the chance. You aren’t allowing for Environment, you see....”
And only the arrival of the bed, the bath and the chest of drawers cut short (three-quarters of an hour later) the most illuminating talk about Environment that Amory and Cosimo had ever had.
By seven o’clock that evening the studio was practically ready for Amory to come into it. It certainly looked exceedingly comfortable. A fire had been lighted, more for the sake of decorative effect than from any need of one, and the smell of the excellent little dinner Cosimo had cooked filled the room with a delightfully homelike smell. Potatoes roasted in their jackets in the ashes, liver-and-bacon keeping warm on the two hot plates inside the fender, a pancake ready for pouring into the pan, cheese, fruit, coffee in a little lustre jug only needing the hot water to be poured upon it, and half a bottle of “Veuve Dodo” (an Australian burgundy) from the wineshop in the King’s Road—Cosimo had seen to all. Mrs. ’Ill herself, coming in to give a last look round, had found nothing wanting.
“Well, nobody can say as ’ow you won’t be snug—can they, Florence?” Mrs. ’Ill said, leaving it delicately in doubt whether she meant the pronoun to be taken as in the plural. “A prettier little ’ome, all things considered, I never see. I always says as it isn’t riches as makes contentment; and you ’aven’t far to go for your potatoes anyway, which is just downstairs, also apples and oranges. And eggs I can always supply, though my experience is as artists puts too much trust in eggs, which hasn’t the nourishment of meat when all’s said, and not cheaper when you take your ’ealth into consideration, as all of us must, young or old and married or not. Nor winkles, though I’m fond of ’em myself, but not to rely on. Bring the bucket, Florence, and I ’ope you’ve taken notice, so you can tell ’Orris when ’e comes out next week.... Oh, thank you, sir; I don’t deny it would be acceptable, the smell of turps being that drying—and wishing you good night and sweet dreams....”
And Mrs. ’Ill and Jellies curtsied elaborately and left them.
“She almost said the Creek wasn’t five minutes away!” Cosimo laughed when they had gone. “And that idea was a great success of yours, to put the slippers I’d been whitewashing inside the fender. Jellies’s eyes nearly fell into them when she saw them! Aren’t people funny!... Well, let’s have the first meal in the new place....”
He put a pinch of salt into the coffee-jug and reached for the liver-and-bacon.
As they ate and toasted the new studio, in the Veuve Dodo, they discussed the house-warming that, of course, Amory must give. Including the carved wood frame, the two frocks, and more sundries, Amory’s installation had cost her in all forty-three pounds. A fresh supply of materials for her work would bring the sum up to forty-eight or more—call it forty-eight, and to all intents and purposes forty-eight was fifty. A party by all means; one might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb. They talked of it. Laura would bring her guitar again, and—who was that new friend of Walter’s, the one with the glasses, who seemed to know Nietzsche by heart?... They would get Walter to bring him. And Katie and Dickie, of course, and Phyllis Hardy, and Amory supposed they’d have to ask Dorothy. They could pull the bed from behind its curtain to sit on; and now, thank goodness, there were plates and glasses enough to go round! Amory’s eyes rested on them where they stood in overlapping rows on the rack that Cosimo had put up where the little bookshelf had been. They shone brightly, and the cups twinkled on the new brass hooks below them; and there were tea and coffee in the tins, and milk in a jug, and butter in a little dish, and everything looked so spick-and-span that Amory had half a mind to paint it all. The flat wide kettle Cosimo had bought would boil on the oil-stove in twelve minutes. The bath was under the bed. Cosimo had marked the spare bed and table linen that was neatly folded in the chest of drawers. A curtain drew across the row of pegs on which Amory’s clothes hung, and the reflections of the candle-flames in the polished floor-borders made simply ripping shimmers of colour. Amory was quite cross that she must return to Glenerne that night; it was such a long way for poor Cosimo to see her home. Well, she would be nearer to him soon—practically just round the corner. Then they would be able to see quite a lot of each other.
After supper Cosimo washed up, and then they drew up two chairs to the fire; and Amory turned back her new terra-cotta skirt so as not to scorch it, and they talked and ate apples. They talked of poor Herbertson’s show (he had died), and Mr. Dix’s articles, and Amory’s own work; and it was long before Amory yawned sleepily. Then she rose. Return to Glenerne she must. She begged Cosimo, who had had a hard day, to let her go alone; but Cosimo would not hear of it. Then, as Cosimo was putting out the lamp, they both laughed together. The absent-minded fellow had actually been on the point of setting out with her to Shepherd’s Bush in the slippers in which he had white-washed, leaving his boots by the side of her bed.