Susan and her mother were in and of the ancient town. In these days of cheap excursions and motor-cars it is not easy to project the mind back to the time when the middle classes rarely stirred from home. To be in Melchester, according to Susan Biddlecombe, was a pleasure; to be of it, a privilege. Melchester had imposed upon her its inexorable conventions, the more inexorable because they were unformulated, exuding from every pore of the body corporate. Chief amongst them perhaps was veneration for the Bishop, who ruled his diocese with doctrinal severity tempered by gifts of port wine and tea and beef. Nonconformity was ill at ease and slightly out of elbows beneath the shadow of the most beautiful spire in England. The only Radical of importance in the town was Pinker, the rich grocer. And when the Marquess of Mel said to him, chaffingly, "Ah, Pinker, why don’t you belong to us?" the honest fellow replied, "It’s this way, my lord. The Conservative gentry deal with me because I know my business. The Radicals buy from me because I’m a Radical. They’d sooner deal with the Stores than with a Tory grocer." Quinney continued: "I have my eye on London, Paris, and New York." "Mercy me!" "Meanwhile, Melchester is good enough. But our house must be a show place—see?" Susan tried to see, but blinked. "I shall take some of our customers to our house, to show them the things they can’t have. I mean, of course, the things they can’t have except at a big price. Nothing bothers a collector so much as that. Your real connoisseur"—Quinney had not yet mastered the pronunciation of this word—"goes dotty when he can’t get what he wants. By Gum, he feels as I used to feel when I wanted you, and the old man was alive and everlastingly jawing about Arabella Pinker. I shall have a lot of Arabellas in the shop, but my Susans will be at home." "But, Joe, mother and I were so looking forward to furnishing the Dream Cottage." "I know, I know!" He began to skate swiftly over the thin ice. "But your ideas, sweetie, are so—so semi-detached. You haven’t got the instinct for the right stuff. I have. You and your mother want to stir up Laburnum Row. I’m a-going to make the whole of Melchester sit up and howl. See?" Susan nodded. Very dimly she apprehended these incredible ambitions, and yet her instinct, no more at fault than his, whispered to her that Joe could do it. From that moment Laburnum Row appeared in its true proportions. Quinney said quickly: "I’ll leave the kitchen and the bedrooms to you, but, remember, no rubbish." Accordingly it came to pass that the Dream Cottage was furnished with charming bits of Chippendale, Hepplewhite, and Sheraton, picked up here and there throughout Wessex. The rubbish in the shop was sold _en bloc_, being taken over by a small dealer. The premises were put into the hands of a London decorator, a friend of the great Tomlin.