"Dear Mrs Asplin," she said sweetly, "I don't know anything about cupboards. We never worried about these things in India; the servants managed somehow, and I presume they can manage here. The entertaining rooms are large enough to take in our furniture, and Peggy likes them. Those are the great points which we have to consider. If there are enough bedrooms to take us in, I think we shall be satisfied." This Saville trio was the most impracticable party of house-hunters whom the vicar's wife had ever known, and she wondered no longer at the difficulty they had experienced in finding a house to their taste, when she noted the spirit in which they surveyed the present premises. A convenience was not a convenience at all if it interfered with a fad or fancy, and a serious drawback was hailed with delight if it appeared in quaint or unexpected fashion. As a matter of fact, the purchase of the house had been a foregone conclusion, since the moment when Peggy had beheld the oak walls of the dining-room, and within twenty-four hours from that moment it was a concluded fact. Ah, then and there was hurrying to and fro, and endless journeys up to town, and interviews with obstinate decorators, who would insist on obtruding their own ideas, and battles waged with British workmen, who could not understand why one shade of a colour was not as good as another, or wherein lay the deadly necessity that they should match. Peggy put a penny in the slot and weighed herself on the machine at the station every second or third day, to verify her statement that she was wasting to a shadow beneath the nervous strain. She was left at the vicarage in order to superintend the workmen, while Colonel and Mrs Saville stayed in town to interview furniture dealers and upholsterers; and every morning she walked over to Yew Hedge and made a procession round the rooms, to note what progress had been made since the day before. Half-a-dozen men were at work, or, to be strictly accurate, were _engaged_ to work, at the house; but beyond the fact that it grew steadily dirtier and dirtier, and that the splashes of whitewash and shavings of paper stretched further and further down the drive, it was difficult to see what progress was being made.