Evidently it did, for Mrs. Wick, after shooting one or two more of her sharpest looks, declared herself willing to enter into discussion of details.  He required attendance, did he?  Well it all depended upon what sort of attendance he expected; if he wanted cooking at late hours.—­Warburton cut short these anticipatory objections, and made known that his wants were few and simple:  plain breakfast at eight o’clock, cold supper on the table when he came home, a mid-day meal on Sundays, and the keeping of his rooms in order; that was all.  After morose reflection, Mrs. Wick put her demand for rooms and service at a pound a week, but to this Warburton demurred.  It cost him agonies to debate such a matter; but, as he knew very well, the price was excessive for unfurnished lodgings, and need constrained him.  He offered fifteen shillings, and said he would call for Mrs. Wick’s decision on the morrow.  The landlady allowed him to go to the foot of the stairs, then stopped him.

“I wouldn’t mind taking fifteen shillings,” she said, “if I knew it was for a permanency.”

“I can’t bind myself more than by the month.”

“Would you be willing to leave a deposit?”

So the matter was settled, and Warburton arranged to enter into possession that day week.

Without delay the shop repairs were finished, inside and out; orders for stock were completed; in two days—­as a great bill on the shutters announced—­“Jollyman’s Grocery Stores” would be open to the public.  Allchin pleaded strongly for the engagement of the brass band; it wouldn’t cost much, and the effect would be immense.  Warburton shrugged, hesitated, gave way, and the band was engaged.

CHAPTER 19

Rosamund Elvan was what ladies call a good correspondent.  She wrote often, she wrote at length, and was satisfied with few or brief letters in reply.  Scarcely had she been a week at Cairo, when some half dozen sheets of thin paper, covered with her small swift writing, were dispatched to Bertha Cross, and, thence onwards, about once a fortnight such a letter arrived at Walham Green.  Sitting by a fire kept, for economical reasons, as low as possible, with her mother’s voice sounding querulously somewhere in the house, and too often a clammy fog at the window, Bertha read of Egyptian delights and wonders, set glowingly before her in Rosamund’s fluent style.  She was glad of the letters, for they manifested a true affection, and were in every way more interesting than any others that she received; but at times they made the cheerless little house seem more cheerless still, and the pang of contrast between her life and Rosamund’s called at such moments for all Bertha’s sense of humour to make it endurable.