But when he had put Thomas to bed, in his little common cheap night-shirt, he went out into the streets with his weekly earnings in his pockets and spent them.  He spent every penny he had.  First he went to a florist’s and bought daffodils, in great golden sheaves.  Then he went to a toyshop and got a splendid family of fluffy beasts, and a musical box, and a Noah’s Ark, and a flute.  He had spent all his money by then, so he pawned his watch and signet ring and bought Thomas some pretty cambric clothes and a rocking cradle.  He had nothing else much to pawn.  But he badly wanted some Japanese paintings to put in the place of the pictures that at present adorned the sitting-room.  Thomas and he must have something nice and gay to look at, instead of the Royal Family and the Monarch of the Glen and “Grace Sufficient” worked in crewels.  So he went into a shop in Holborn and chose some paintings, and ordered them to be sent up, and said, “Please enter them to me,” so firmly that they did.  Having done that once, he repeated it at several other shops, and sometimes they obeyed him and sometimes said that goods could not be sent up without pre-payment.  Pre-payment (or, indeed, as far as Peter could look forward, post-payment) being out of the question, those goods had to be left where they were.  But Peter, though handicapped by shabby attire, had an engaging way with him, and most shopmen are trustful and obliging.  If they lost by the transaction, thought Peter recklessly, it was their turn to lose, not his.  It was his turn to acquire, and he had every intention of doing so.  He had a glorious evening, till the shops shut.  Then he went home, and found that the daffodils had come, and he filled the room with them, converting its dingy ugliness into a shining glory.  Then he took down all the horrible pictures and texts and stacked them behind the sofa, awaiting the arrival of the Japanese paintings.  He thought Thomas would like the paintings as much as he did himself.  Their room in future should be a bright and pleasant place, fit for human beings to live in.  He cleared the chimney-piece of its horrid, tinkling ornaments to leave space for his brown pottery jars full of daffodils.  He put the ornaments with the pictures behind the sofa, and when the Girl came in with his supper requested her at her leisure to remove them.

“I have been getting some new pictures, you see,” he told her, and was annoyed at the way her round eyes widened.  Why shouldn’t he get as many new pictures as he chose, without being gaped at?

There was more gaping next day, when his purchases were sent up.  He had warned his landlady and the Girl beforehand, that they might not tell the messengers it must be a mistake and send them away, on what would, no doubt be their stupid and impertinent impulse.  So they gaped and took them in, and Peter hurried back early from his work and fetched Thomas in to watch him open parcels and admire the contents.  He spread bright rugs over the horse-hair