“I don’t know ’ow you can put up with the place,” she said, shaking her head sadly over the pail of dirty water which was her constant companion. “It gives me the creeps every time I comes into it. That ole table, y’know. Well, it looks as if it was a ’undred years old.”
“It’s a great deal more,” said Wynne.
“There you are, y’see! Why you don’t git a nice cloth and cover it up beats me!”
“Roundheads drank at that table,” said Wynne.
“Fat-’eads, more like—nowhere for your knees or anything. And the walls, too! My ole man does a bit o’ paper-’anging to oblige in ’is spare time. I dessay ’e’d ’ang a piece for you, to oblige.”
“He would oblige me very much by doing nothing of the kind.”
“Thet’s silly—that is. No one can’t like plain walls when they can ’ave ’em floral. Not so much as a picture anywhere! W’y don’t you pin up a few photos?”
“Don’t possess any, and I—”
“Well, if that’s all, I dessay I could give you a few. Liknesses, they’d be—not views. You could ’ave any one of my pore Minnie o’o was took.”
Wynne did not want to offend the woman, but was forced to safeguard his own peace of mind.