Estimate For Proposed Renovations.
+==========================================+=+=+
|To Removal of furniture |1|9|
+------------------------------------------+-+-+
|Storage of same at rate of 6 pence per day|1|6|
+------------------------------------------+-+-+
|Restoration of same |1|9|
+------------------------------------------+-+-+
|Impliments |1|0|
+------------------------------------------+-+-+
|Man's time |1|3|
+------------------------------------------+-+-+
|Sundrys | |6|
+------------------------------------------+-+-+
| |7|9|
+==========================================+=+=+
It was quite a formidable total, but Lorna was evidently accustomed to
extortionate demands, and began beating him down without delay.
"Well, of all the outrageous pieces of impudence! Seven and ninepence,
indeed! You must have taken leave of your senses. If you think I am
going to pay you four or five shillings for carrying a few odds and ends
of furniture along the passage, you are mightily mistaken! And we
should have to help you, too, for you couldn't manage alone. If we
asked Wallace he'd do it at once, without any pay at all."
"Drink to me only with thine eyes!" chanted the little wretch, folding
his arms and gazing fixedly at me with a life-like assumption of
Wallace's attitude and expression, which sent Lorna into fits of
laughter, and made me magenta with embarrassment. "If you like to wait
until Wallace has time to run your errands and see you through your
difficulties, you will get your room finished by Christmas--with luck!
I am sorry you think my charges high, but I'm afraid I don't see my way
to reduce 'em."
"Midas, don't be a goose! We will pay you twopence an hour for your
time, and twopence a day for storage--that's the limit. That disposes
of the first four items. As for the rest, we had better understand each
other before we go any further. Kindly distinguish between implements
and sundries."
"Is this an Oxford local, or is it a conversation between a brother and
sister?" Midas demanded, throwing back his head, and mutely appealing
to an unseen arbiter in the corner of the ceiling. "If you can't
understand a simple thing like that, it doesn't say much for your
education. It is easily seen _you_ were never a plumber! I thought we
were going to come to a friendly agreement, but you are so close and
grasping, there is no dealing with you. Look here, will you give me
half-a-crown for the job?"
I gasped with surprise at this sudden and sweeping reduction of terms,
but Lorna said calmly--
"Done! A halfpenny discount if paid within the hour!" and they shook
hands with mutual satisfaction.
"Cheap at the price!" was Lorna's comment, as the contractor left the
room, and before the next few days were over I heartily agreed with this
opinion. Midas was an ideal workman, grudging neither time nor pains to
accomplish his task in a satisfactory manner. His long arms and strong
wrists made light of what would have been heavy tasks for us, and the
dirtier he grew the more he enjoyed it. It must be dreadful to live in
a town! Lorna assured me plaintively that the room had been thoroughly
spring-cleaned at Easter, but I should have thought it had happened
nearer the Flood. I swallowed pecks of dust, and my hands grew raw with
washing before we began to paint. I thought we should never have
finished enamelling that room. The first coat made hardly any
impression on the background, and we had to go over it again and again
before we got anything like a good effect. To a casual observer it
looked really very nice, but we knew where to look for shortcomings, and
I grew hot whenever anyone looked at a certain panel in the door.
Then we set to work on the paper. First you cut it into lengths. It
seems quite easy, but it isn't, because you waste yards making the
patterns meet, and then you haven't enough, and you go into town to buy
more, and they haven't it in stock, and it has to be ordered, and you
sit and champ, and can't get any further.
Then you make the paste. It smells horrid, and do what you will, cover
yourself as best you can, it gets up to the eyes! We wore two old
holland skirts of Lorna's, quite short and trig, and washing shirts, and
huge print wrappers; but before we had been working for an hour our
fingers were glued together; then we yawned or sneezed and put our hands
to our faces, and _they_ were stickied. Then bits of hair--"tendrils"
as they call them in books--fell down, and we fastened them up, and our
hair got as bad. We were spectacles!
A kettle was kept on the hob, and we were continually bathing our hands
in hot water, for, of course, we dared not touch the outside of the
paper unless they were quite clean, and the table wanted washing before
each fresh strip was laid down, as the paste had always oozed off the
edges of the last piece. There is one thing sure and certain: I shall
never take up paper-hanging as a profession.
The hanging itself is really rather exciting. Midas climbed to the top
of the ladder and held the top of the strip in position; Lorna crouched
beneath, and guided it in the way it should go, so as to meet the edge
of the one before, and I stood on a chair and smoothed it down and down
with a clean white cloth. Doing it with great care like this, we got no
wrinkles at all, and when the first side of the room was finished, it
looked so professional that we danced--literally danced--for joy.
By the end of the afternoon it was done, and so were we! Simply so
tired we could hardly stand, but mentally we were full of triumph, for
that room was a picture to behold. We ran out into the passage and
brought in everyone we could find, servants and charwoman included.
Then they made remarks, and we stood and listened.
The cook said, "My, Miss Lorna, wouldn't the pattern go round?" The
charwoman said, "I like a bit of gilding meself. It looks 'andsome."
The parlourmaid said, "How will the furniture look against it, miss?"
which was really the nastiest hit of all; only the little Tweeny stared
and flushed, and rolled her hands in her apron, and said, "All them
roses on the wall! It would be like a Bank-'oliday to sit aside 'em!"
Tweeny has the soul of a poet. I bought her some flowers the very next
time I went out. Wallace came in and twiddled his moustache, and said--
"By Jove, is it really done! Aren't you dead beat? I say, Miss
Sackville, don't do any more to-day. It's too bad of Lorna to work you
like this. I shall interfere in my professional capacity."
He was far too much engrossed in Una Sackville to have any eyes for the
paper.
Mrs Forbes thought, like the cook, that it was a pity that the pattern
didn't go round; and the dear old doctor tip-toed up and down, jingled
the money in his pockets, and said--
"Eh, what? Eh, what? Something quite novel, eh! Didn't go in for
things of this sort in my young days. Very smart indeed, my dear, very
smart! Now I suppose you will be wanting some new fixings," (his hand
came slowly out of his waistcoat pocket, and my hopes ran mountains
high). "Mustn't spoil the ship for a penn'orth of tar, you know.
There, that will help to buy a few odds and ends."
He put something into Lorna's hand; she looked at it, flushed red with
delight, and hugged him rapturously round the neck. After he had gone
she showed it to me with an air of triumph, and it was--half-a-
sovereign! I expected several pounds, and had hard work not to show my
disappointment, but I suppose ten shillings means as much to Lorna as
ten pounds to me. Well, I am not at all sure that you don't get more
fun out of planning and contriving to make a little money go a long way,
than in simply going to a shop and ordering what you want. Lorna's
worldly wealth amounted, with the half-sovereign, to seventeen and six-
pence, and with this lordly sum for capital we set to work to transform
the room.