Rose revived a little under this praise of Tanqueray. Not that she said
very much about it to him. She was too hurt by the way he thrust all his
reviews into the waste-paper basket, without showing them to her. But
she went and picked them out of the waste-paper basket when he wasn't
looking, and pasted all the good ones into a book, and burnt all the
bad ones in the kitchen fire. And she brought the reviews, and made her
boast of him to Aunt and Uncle, and told them of the nice sum of money
that his book had "fetched," this time. This was all he had been waiting
for, she said, before he took a little house at Hampstead.
For he had taken it at last, that little house. It was one of a terrace
of three that stood high above the suburb, close to the elm-tree walk
overlooking the West Heath. A diminutive brown-brick house, with jasmine
climbing all over it, and a little square of glass laid like a mat in
front of it, and a little garden of grass and flower-borders behind.
Inside, to be sure, there wasn't any drawing-room; for what did Rose
want with a drawing-room, she would like to know? But there was a
beautiful study for Tanqueray up-stairs, and a little dining-room and a
kitchen for Rose below.
Rose had sought counsel in her furnishing; with the result that
Tanqueray's study bore a remarkable resemblance to Laura Gunning's room
in Camden Town, while Rose's dining-room recalled vividly Mrs.
Henderson's dining-room at Fleet.
Though it was such a little house, there had been no difficulty about
getting the furniture all in. The awful thing was moving Tanqueray and
his books. It was a struggle, a hostile invasion, and it happened on his
birthday. And in the middle of it all, when the last packing-case was
hardly emptied, and there wasn't a carpet laid down anywhere, Tanqueray
announced that he had asked some people to dine that night.
"Wot, a dinner-party?" said Rose (she was trying not to cry).
"No, not a party. Only six."
"Six," said Rose, "_is_ a dinner-party."
"Twenty-six might be."
Rose sat down and looked at him and said, "Oh dear, oh dear." But she
had begun to smooth her hair in a kind of anticipation.
Then Tanqueray stooped and put his arm around her and kissed her and
said it was his birthday. He always did ask people to dine on his
birthday. There would only be the Brodricks and Nicky and Nina Lempriere
and Laura Gunning--No, Laura Gunning couldn't come. That, with
themselves, made six.
"Well----" said Rose placidly.
"I can take them to a restaurant if you'd rather. But I thought it would
be so nice to have them in our own house. When it's my birthday."
She smiled. She was taking it all in. In her eyes, for once, he was like
a child, with his birthday and his party. How could she refuse him
anything on his birthday? And all through the removal he had been so
good.
Already she was measuring spaces with her eye.
"It'll 'old six," she said--"squeezin'."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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