And now the curtains were up, and the cases home, and all but the books there, which being somewhat essential to a library, Mrs. Fairchild said to her husband,
"My dear, you must buy some books. I want to fill these cases and get this room finished."
"I will," he replied. "There's an auction to-night. I'll buy a lot."
"An auction," she said, hesitatingly. "Is that the best place? I don't think the bindings will be apt to be handsome of auction books."
"I can have them rebound," he answered.
"But you cannot tell whether they will fit these shelves," she continued, anxiously. "I think you had better take the measure of the shelves, and go to some book-store, and then you can choose them accordingly."
"I see Ashfield very often at book auctions," he persisted, to which she innocently replied,
"Oh, yes—but he knows what he is buying, we don't;" to which unanswerable argument Mr. Fairchild had nothing to say. And so they drove to a great book importers, and ordered the finest books and bindings that would suit their measurements.
And now they were at last, as Mrs. Fairchild expressed it, "all fixed." Mr. Fairchild had paid and dismissed the last workman—she had home every article she could think of—and now they were to sit down and enjoy.
The succeeding weeks passed in perfect quiet—and, it must be confessed, profound ennui.