His heart was so set on that book that I yielded. We wandered all over London together buying the furniture. There was a settee that I particularly wanted, but George, with his usual thoughtfulness, said:
“Let us rather buy a study table. It will help me at my work, and once the book is out we shall be able to afford half a dozen settees.”
Another time he went alone to buy some pictures for the drawing-room.
“I got a study chair instead,” he told me in the evening. “I knew you would not mind, my darling, for the chair is the very thing for writing a big book in.”
He even gave thought to the ink-bottle.
“In my room,” he said, “I am constantly discovering that my ink-bottle is empty, and it puts me out of temper to write with water and soot. I therefore think we ought to buy one of those large ink-stands with two bottles.”
“We shall,” I replied, with the rapture of youth, “and mine will be the pleasant task of seeing that the bottles are kept full.”
“Dearest!” he said, fondly, for this was the sort of remark that touched him most.
“Every evening,” I continued, encouraged by his caressing tones, “you will find your manuscripts lying on the table waiting for you, and a pen with a new nib in it.”
“What a wife you will make!” he exclaimed.