Perkins.  Well—­I positively decline to sit in the fireplace.  I tell you that right now.

Mrs. Bradley.  Don’t waste time talking about petty details.  Let the entrance be there.  We can hang the curtain on a frame two feet out from the wall, so that there will be plenty of room behind for Hartley and Pendleton to stand.  The frame can be fastened to the wood-work of the mantel-piece.  It may take a screw or two to hold it, but they’ll be high up, so nobody will notice the holes in the wood after it comes down.  The point that bothers me is this wall-paper.  People don’t put wall-papers on their conservatories.

Perkins (sarcastically).  I’ll have the room repapered in sheet-glass.  Or we might borrow a few hot-bed covers and hang them from the picture moulding, so that the place would look like a real greenhouse.

Yardsley.  Napoleonic idea.  Barlow, jot down among the properties ten hot-bed covers, twenty picture-hooks, and a coil of wire.  You’re developing, Perkins.

Mrs. Perkins (ruefully, aside).  I wish Thaddeus’s jokes weren’t always taken seriously.  The idea of my drawing-room walls being hung with hot-bed covers!  Why, it’s awful.

Yardsley.  Well, now that that’s settled, we’ll have to dispose of the pictures.  Thaddeus, I wish you’d take down the pictures on the east wall, so that we can put our mind’s eye on just how we shall treat the background.  The mere hanging of hot-bed covers there will not do.  The audience could see directly through the glass, and the wall-paper would still destroy the illusion.

Perkins.  Anything.  Perhaps if you got a jack-plane and planed the walls off it would suffice.

Bradley.  Don’t be sarcastic, my boy.  Remember we didn’t let you into this.  You volunteered.

Perkins.  I know it, Bradley.  The house is yours.

Barlow.  I said you had paresis when you made the offer, Perkins.  If you want to go to law about it, I think you could get an injunction against us—­or, rather, Mrs. Perkins could—­on the ground that you were non compos at the time.

Mrs. Perkins.  Why, we’re most happy to have you, I’m sure.

Perkins.  So ’m I. (Aside.) Heaven forgive me that!

Yardsley.  By-the-way, Thad, there’s one thing I meant to have spoken about as soon as I got here.  Er—­is this your house, or do you rent it?

Perkins.  I rent it.  What has that to do with it?

Bradley.  A great deal.  You don’t think we’d treat your house as we would a common landlord’s, do you?  You wouldn’t yourself.

Yardsley.  That’s the point.  If you own the house we want to be careful and consider your feelings.  If you don’t, we don’t care what happens.

Perkins.  I don’t own the house. (Aside.) And under the circumstances I’m rather glad I don’t.

Yardsley.  Well, I’m glad you don’t.  My weak point is my conscience, and when it comes to destroying a friend’s property, I don’t exactly like to do it.  But if this house belongs to a sordid person, who built it just to put money in his own pocket, I don’t care.  Barlow, you can nail those portieres up.  It won’t be necessary to build a frame for them.  Bradley, carry the chairs and cabinets out.