‘It is a nice little house. You shall have the “Little chair,”
from Yearsly. It would go well, I think, in that drawing-room.
Your chairs must be small, for these rooms.’
She said that the paint on the stairs would not do. It was dark
brown paint, and very ugly, but Walter thought we should leave
it.
She said:
‘It is all wrong, that brown paint, you must have it taken off.’
Mrs. Sebright said we must have the drains relaid. I had thought
we might leave the drains.
Maud came up from Lessingham to see the house. She said we should
have the paint inside green.
She said:
‘It saves work; white paint gives far more trouble.’
But I did not want green paint inside.
In the bedroom, she said:
‘You can have a nice fumed oak suite, in here. There are excellent
fumed oak suites at the Army and Navy Stores. I have furnished
the bedrooms in our teachers’ hostel with their suites. Well
made, and in very good taste.’
Walter said:
‘Helen does not like fumed oak.’
‘Oh really! I thought every one liked fumed oak now. What does
Helen like?’
They always talked of me as though I was not there.
Walter said:
‘She likes old furniture. Old mahogany and . . . and walnut.’
Maud laughed:
‘Oh, of course,’ she said, ‘we should all like old walnut best,
I imagine. I am afraid Helen will find that a professor’s salary
will hardly allow of furnishing in that style!’
She smiled at me, in what I think she meant to be an encouraging
way.
She said:
‘Helen will soon learn, I am sure. A poor professor’s wife can
hardly expect to live in the way she has been accustomed to;
even clothes, for instance, the cost of clothes will have to
be considered,’ and she glanced at mine, ‘but I feel sure that
Helen will soon learn. We must all help her’; and she smiled
again.
I began to hate Maud. I wondered if she wanted to make it all
seem horrid.