When the best room had been included, and then the dressing-room, even
Matthew had been alarmed. "It'll come to as much as five hundred
pounds!" he had whispered to Mrs. Annesley. Matthew seemed to think that
it was quite time that there should be somebody to control his master.
"Why, ma'am, it's only the other day, because I can remember it myself,
when that loo-table came into the house new!" Matthew had been in the
place over twenty years. When Mrs. Annesley reminded him that fashions
were changed, and that other kinds of table were required, he only shook
his head.
But there was a question more vital than that of expense. How was the
new furniture to be chosen? The first idea was that Florence should be
invited to spend a week at her future home, and go up and down to London
with either Mrs. Annesley or her brother, and select the furniture
herself. But there were reasons against this. Mr. Prosper would like to
surprise her by the munificence of what he did. And the suggestion of
one day was sure to wane before the stronger lights of the next. Mr.
Prosper, though he intended to be munificent, was still a little afraid
that it should be thrown away as a thing of course, or that it should
appear to have been Harry's work.
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