“And with all our friends in London, Pepino,” she said in the decisive round of these combats, “who are longing to come down to Riseholme and spend a week with us, our expenses here will go up. You mustn’t forget that. We shall be having a succession of visitors in October, and indeed till we go south. Then there’s the meadow at the bottom of the garden: you’ve not bought that yet, and on that I really have set my heart. A spring garden there. A profusion of daffodils, and a paved walk. You promised me that. I described what it would be like to Tony, and he is wildly jealous. I’m sure I don’t wonder. Your new telescope too. I insist on that telescope, and I’m sure I don’t know where the money’s to come from. My dear old piano also: it’s on its very last legs, and won’t last much longer, and I know you don’t expect me to live, literally keep alive, without a good piano in the house.” Pepino was weakening. Even when he was perfectly well and strong he was no match for her, and this rain of blows was visibly staggering him. “I don’t want to urge you, _caro_,” she continued. “You know I never urge you to do what you don’t feel is best.” “But you are urging me,” said Pepino. “Only to do what you feel is best. As for the memories of Aunt Amy in Brompton Square, you must not allow false sentiment to come in. You never saw her there since you were a boy, and if you brought down here her portrait, and the wool-work rug which you remember her putting over her knees, I should say, without urging you, mind, that that was ample.... What a sweet morning! Come to the end of the garden and imagine what the meadow will look like with a paved walk and a blaze of daffodils.... The Chippendale chairs, I think I should sell.” Lucia did not really want Aunt Amy’s portrait either, for she was aware she had said a good deal from time to time about Aunt Amy’s pearls, which were there, a little collar of very little seeds, faultlessly portrayed. But then Georgie had seen them on the night at the Opera, and Lucia felt that she knew Riseholme very poorly if it was not perfectly acquainted by now with the nature and minuteness of Aunt Amy’s pearls. The pearls had better be sold too, and also, she thought, her own portrait by Sigismund, for the post-cubists were not making much of a mark.