"So," I grumbled presently, "this is your idea of the cheapest way of lighting a room—candles at goodness knows how much a pound?"
"Well, there's no electric light," retorted Evie.
"And what have you left me at the other place? A bed and a broken chair, I suppose, to make shift with for three weeks and more!"
"And a jampot for your shaving-water. Quite enough for a bachelor."
"And I'm to get my meals out, I suppose, and pay twice as much for them."
But they only begged me to look where they had put Billy Izzard's two sketches—one on either side of the verandah door.
I had, in truth, begun to feel the least bit alarmed at the rate at which the money was going. Kitchens, I learned, cost like the dickens; but, as Evie frugally extinguished the candles again and led me down into her special province, I could not deny that that looked pretty too, with its bright tins, hanging jugs, overlapping rows of plates and saucers and the new linoleum of its floor. The dining-room, into which (as Evie said) "all the dirt was brought," had been left until the last, and was knee-deep in straw, torn packing-paper, split box-lids and cut string, and of course I grumbled again that good brown paper had been torn and useful string spoiled, until I was brought into good temper again by being allowed another peep at the lighted drawing-room—this time without Aunt Angela.