bedstead of brass with mother-o’-pearl ornaments.  But to do him justice, it was sheer nervous terror which prompted the brutal remark that, “Really, mother-o’-pearl ornaments were more than he could stand”; for he melted and gave in at once at the sight of Flossie feeling the rosy down coverlet with her little hands.  When their eyes met, Flossie’s face was as rosy as the coverlet; so that the attendant spirit of commerce himself turned from them abashed.  That there would, that there must be, such a moment Keith had had a horrible foreboding as he followed up the stairs.

Nobody could have been more happy than Flossie following the dream in Tottenham Court Road; and Rickman was happy because she was.  Happy for a whole fortnight; and then for the first time they quarrelled.

And this was how it happened.  They were going to live at Ealing; not because they liked it, but because the neighbourhood was cheap.  Flossie had said, “When we’re rich, we’ll go to Kensington”; and he had answered with an odious flippancy, “Yes, and when we die we’ll go to heaven”; but for the present, Flossie (wise Flossie who loved economy even more than Kensington) was content with Ealing.  That she was obliged to be content with it made her feel, naturally, that she was entitled to gratification on every other point.  It was not over Ealing, then, that they quarrelled, but over the choosing of the house.  Flossie was all for a gay little brand-new, red-brick villa, with nice clean white paint about it, only two minutes from the tram; he for a little old-fashioned brown-brick house with jasmine all over it, and a garden all grass and lilac bushes at the back.  He said the garden would be nice to sit in.  She said, what was the good of sitting in a garden when you had to walk ever so far to the tram?  He retorted that walking was a reason for sitting; and she that if it came to that they could sit in the house.  She wouldn’t hear of the old brown house, nor he of the brand-new villa.  He was peculiarly sensitive to his surroundings.

“The villa,” said he, “is a detestable little den.”

“It isn’t,” said she, “it’s got a lovely bay window in the drawing room, and a dear little balcony on the top.”

“But there isn’t a quiet place in it, dear, where I could write.”

“Oh, that’s all you’re thinking of—­”

“Well, there isn’t, really.  Whereas here” (they were going now through the little brown house), “there’s a jolly big room at the back, where you can see miles away over the fields towards Harrow.”

“Oh, you’ve got time to look out of the window, have you, though you are so busy?”

“Never mind the window, let’s look at the house.  What’s wrong with it?”

“What’s wrong with the house?  It won’t suit the furniture, that’s what’s wrong with it.”

“You mean the furniture won’t suit it?”

“The furniture’s chosen and the house isn’t.  There’s no good going back on that.”