"Furniture, miss! I've told him I won't marry to go into rooms, not if it's ever so. I'll wait till I get a 'ome of me own. He'd put by a goodish bit, and so had I, but things have been agen us. He was out of work four months last winter, and mother's legs are a awful drain-- liniments, and bandages, and what-not. You can't see your own mother suffer, and not pay out. We've got to wait till we save up again." "How much money does it take to furnish a cottage over here, Mury?" "That depends on how it's done. You can do it 'an'some for forty pounds. I lived with a girl who did hers for twenty, but I wouldn't like to be as close as that. I reckon about thirty." "Thirty pounds! One hundred and fifty dollars!" Cornelia gasped in astonishment at the smallness of the sum. "You can't mean that that includes everything--chairs and tables, and carpets, and dishes, and beds, and bureaus, and brooms, and tins, and curtains, and fire-irons-- and all the fixing to put 'em up! It isn't possible you can get them all for a hundred and fifty dollars!" "You can, miss. There's a shop in the Fore Street where they do you everything complete for three rooms for thirty pounds, with a velvet suite for the parlour. Lady's chair, gent's chair, sofa, and four uprights, with chiffonnier, and overmantel, and all. You couldn't wish for anything better. The girl I lived with had only a few odd bits--I'd be ashamed to have such a poor sort of parlour.--In the kitchen they give you a dresser, and a flap-table, and linoleum on the floor. Jim and me went to the shop one day to have a look round. ... That was when he had a bit put by!" Mary sighed, and flicked away a tear. "And now you're going next! I'm getting a bit sick of bad luck, I am!" Cornelia was bending forward in her seat, her chin supported in the palms of her hands. Her expression was very grave and wistful, but in her eyes shone the light of awakened interest. "Mury!--you've been real good and attentive to me. I guess I've given you quite a heap of trouble. I want to make you a present before I go. Would you like it if I fixed-up that house so's you could get married right away? If you say so, you can go to that store and make your own bargains, and I'll leave thirty pounds with Miss Ramsden to pay the bills. I'd like to feel I'd helped you to a home of your own, Mury!" Mary clutched the back of a chair near to which she was standing; her eyes protruded, her chin dropped, speech failed her in the excess of emotion. She could only stare, and gasp, and stare again.