He indicated an article of furniture which stood in front of the range, at a distance of perhaps six feet from it, cutting the room in half.  This contrivance may be called a sofa, or it may be called a couch; but it can only be properly described by the Midland word for it—­squab.  No other term is sufficiently expressive.  Its seat—­five feet by two—­was very broad and very low, and it had a steep, high back and sides.  All its angles were right angles.  It was everywhere comfortably padded; it yielded everywhere to firm pressure; and it was covered with a grey and green striped stuff.  You could not sit on that squab and be in a draught; yet behind it, lest the impossible should arrive, was a heavy curtain, hung on an iron rod which crossed the room from wall to wall.  Not much imagination was needed to realise the joy and ecstasy of losing yourself on that squab on a winter afternoon, with the range fire roaring in your face, and the curtain drawn abaft.

Helen assumed the mathematical centre of the squab, and began to arrange her skirts in cascading folds; she had posed her parasol in a corner of it, as though the squab had been a railway carriage, which, indeed, it did somewhat resemble.

“By the way, lass, what’s that as swishes?” James demanded.

“What’s what?”

“What’s that as swishes?”

She looked puzzled for an instant, then laughed—­a frank, gay laugh, light and bright as aluminium, such as the kitchen had never before heard.

“Oh!” she said.  “It’s my new silk petticoat, I suppose.  You mean that?” She brusquely moved her limbs, reproducing the unique and delicious rustle of concealed silk.

“Ay!” ejaculated the old man, “I mean that.”

“Yes.  It’s my silk petticoat.  Do you like it?”

“I havena’ seen it, lass.”

She bent down, and lifted the hem of her dress just two inches—­the discreetest, the modestest gesture.  He had a transient vision of something fair—­it was gone again.

“I don’t know as I dislike it,” said he.

He was standing facing her, his back to the range, and his head on a level with the high narrow mantelpiece, upon which glittered a row of small tin canisters.  Suddenly he turned to the corner to the right of the range, where, next to an oak cupboard, a velvet Turkish smoking cap depended from a nail.  He put on the cap, of which the long tassel curved down to his ear.  Then he faced her again, putting his hands behind him, and raising himself at intervals on his small, well-polished toes.  She lifted her two hands simultaneously to her head, and began to draw pins from her hat, which pins she placed one after another between her lips.  Then she lowered the hat carefully from her head, and transfixed it anew with the pins.

“Will you mind hanging it on that nail?” she requested.

He took it, as though it had been of glass, and hung it on the nail.