'Now! What offers?' repeated the auctioneer, looking impatiently round. 'Come, make a bid! A good rosewood chair, upholstered in damask.'
There was silence. No one seemed to want such a wretched piece of furniture, except the widow, who longed for it so earnestly that the power of speech seemed to go from her.
'George,' she gasped, as she pulled her boy's sleeve, 'say you'll give a shilling. I can't make him hear me.'
'A shilling!' shouted out the boy, and the auctioneer turned in his direction at once.
'A shilling for a rosewood chair, upholstered in best damask!' he said, in a voice of scorn. 'And this in the respectable city of Wolverhampton!'
The spectators laughed, but no one bid any further sum, so the auctioneer, who wanted to get home to his supper, banged his hammer on the table, and to her surprise and delight the widow found that the chair was hers.
With her boy's help she got the chair home, and cheered her invalid father by telling him 'his old bones should ache no longer. She would have him in an easy-chair by the following day.'
She was up at daybreak, and immediately after their frugal breakfast she dragged the chair into the yard, and began ripping up the fusty old lining.
'Let me do that, mother. I can rip finely,' said George, taking the knife out of her hand, for there is a certain joy in tearing and cutting that appeals to a boy.
'Very well,' said his mother, 'then I will get a pail of warm water, and we will scrub the rosewood, and get all this black dirt off it; and when that's done I'll begin the upholstering. I'm going to cover it with my old red cloak. It will be fine and soft for your grandfather, and I don't wear colours now, so that I can spare the cloak. But, first of all, I will put Grandfather in the window-seat, so that he can see all we are doing. It will amuse him; his life is dull enough, poor dear old man.'