George proposed to Mother that she should move in while he was away. He said somebody must go in to get the painters out. Then he would come home fresh and full of material, and find his study organized and everything ready for him to begin. He said there would be ructions, inseparable from a first installation, and that would put him off work abominably, and spoil the whole brewing!
“Dear,” said Mother, “I fear we shall do badly without you—you are a man, at least—but I’ll be good, and spare you cheerfully!”
So he went. Then Mother set to work, and was perfectly happy. There was to be a sale in this house, because the furniture in it would not go with what George and Lady Scilly had chosen for Cinque Cento House, but there were some old pieces Mother could not do without. Her nice brass bedstead, and the old nursery fender that Ariadne nearly hanged herself on once in a fit of naughtiness, and of course all the bedding and linen and kitchen utensils from “The Magnolias”—one could hardly suppose Lady Scilly had troubled herself about that sort of thing? The greengrocer “moved” us for two pounds. Mother and Aunt Gerty and the cook saw the things off at Isleworth, and Ariadne and I and Kate—Sarah had gone, and I never got any better reason than that she “had to”—received them at Cinque Cento House. Mother had stuck to it, that she would not go near the place till she went in for good, so it was to be all quite new to her and Aunt Gerty. Ariadne and I, who had been in and out for months, wondered how they would like it, and expected some sport when their eyes first fell on it.
We had a long delightful day of anticipation, and putting things where they had to go, and in the evening Mother and Aunt Gerty came. They had got out of the train at Swiss Cottage, and asked their way to their own house. Aunt Gerty had her mouth wide open; Mother had hers tight shut. She was not intending to carp or pass opinions, but the front-door knocker was a regular slap in the face, and took her breath away.
She tried to talk of something else, and whispered to Aunt Gerty, “Rather an inconvenient place for a coal-shoot, isn’t it! Right alongside the front-door!”
I hastened to explain that that was the larder-window she saw, to prevent unpleasantness.
Mother shivered when she got into the hall, which is vast and flagged with marble like a church. “It strikes very cold to the feet!” she said to Aunt Gerty. “Mine are like so much ice.”
“Oh, come along, and we’ll brew you a glass of hot toddy!” Aunt Gerty said cheerfully. “It’s a bit chilly, I think, myself, but ’ansom, like the big ’all where ’Amlet ’as the players!”
Aunt Gerty is generally most careful, but she is apt to drop a little h or so when she is excited. She could hardly contain herself, as Ariadne and I had hoped, when she saw the gilt stairs leading up into the study.
“What price broken legs? Why, I shall have to get roller-skates or take off my shoes and stockings to go up them!”