"See the plans! Why, of course you will! Isn't it your right? You must make a point of seeing them and putting your word in. Look after your own comfort in this world or you will jolly well find yourself out in the cold, and 'specially with a husband like you've got!" "Bother moving!" said Mother, in her dreary way that comes when she has been overdoing it, as she has lately. "It is an odious wrench; just like having all one's teeth out at once." "Hadn't need! Yours are just beautiful. One of your points, Lucy, and don't you forget it." "The life here suited me well enough; I had got used to it, I suppose." "You can get used to something bad, can't you, but that's no reason you are not to welcome a change? Oh, you'll like the new life that's to be spent up-stairs in the daylight, above-board like, instead of this kind of 'behind the scenes' you have been doing for eighteen years. And a pretty woman still, for so you are. Cheer up! You are going to get new scenery, new dresses, new backcloth----" "You see everything through the stage, Gerty. I must say it irritates one sometimes, especially now, when----" "I know what you mean. No offence, my dear old sis. And you can depend on me not to be bringing the smell of the footlights, as they call it--it's the only truly pleasant smell there is, to my idea!--into your fine new house. Pity but _He_ can't get a little whiff of it into his comedies, and some manager would see his way to putting them on, perhaps? No, beloved, me and George don't cotton to each other, nor never shall. He isn't my sort. I like a man that is a man, not a society baa-lamb! Baa! I've no patience with such----" "Sh', Gerty. You seem to forget his child sitting messing away with her paints in a corner so quietly there!" That was me. Aunt Gerty stopped a minute, and then they went on just the same. "We have never minded the child yet" (which was true), "and I don't see why we should begin now. Tempe is getting quite a woman and able to hold her tongue when needful. And she knows her way about her precious father well enough. What you've to think of now, Lucy, is getting your hands white, and the marks of sewing and cooking off. Lemons and pumice! Cream's good, too. You have been George Taylor's upper servant too long--Gracious, who's that at the front-door?"