Mrs. Ford received them at the door with a look of triumph; but it was with consternation that Lucy saw what had happened. The whole room had been transmogrified. The Fords had given all their minds, and a great deal of money, which was of more immediate value, to the great work. Wherever it had been blue now it was pink. White curtains, very stiff with starch fluttered at the windows. There was a great deal of gilding about--gilt cornices, gilt chairs, gilt cabinets, and over the mantel-piece an enormous gilt frame inclosing a portrait of old Trevor, which the good people had caused to be painted by a local artist from an old daguerreotype, all with the kind intention of giving pleasure to Lucy. She gave a cry of dismay as she came in. Her father’s chair and his writing-table--objects which would have recalled him so much more tenderly than this portrait--had been carried away. In their place was what the upholsterer called a “lady’s chair,” covered in one of the newest and most fashionable _cretonnes_, stout little cupids disporting themselves on a pink ground, and a gilt and highly decorated work-table. Lucy stood at the door of the room with the checked tears feeling very hot and heavy behind her eyes. “This is all for you, Lucy,” said Mrs. Ford, restored to good humor by the satisfaction with which she regarded her work; “everything in it has been done for you. We have been working at it these three months and more. If you had but heard us talking--’Do you think she would like this? and do you think she’d like that?’ and Ford would say, ‘I saw a little cabinet in William’s would just please Lucy,’ or ‘There’s some new curtains at Hemsdon’s are the very thing.’ We’ve done nothing else these three months. I declare I don’t think I ever slaved so much in my life--to get carpets that matched and a nice chintz, and the rugs and everything. But we kept the two old white rugs. Mr. Hemsdon said they were beauties. I was determined,” said the good woman, “that you should find something just as pretty as your fine London drawing-rooms. ‘She sha’n’t come home and find nothing but a dingy old place to sit in, and think my Lady Randolph’s is a paradise,’ is what I said to Ford, and he backed me up in everything. And now here it is, Lucy, my darling, and it’s all for you, and I hope you’ll be as happy in it as I and Ford wish you to be. I couldn’t say more if I were to talk from this to Christmas,” Mrs. Ford concluded with a tremulous warmth of enthusiasm which arose partly from the delightful consciousness of giving her charge a pleasant surprise, and partly from a quiver of uncertainty as to whether Lucy’s delight would be equal to the occasion. She added instantaneously, in a tone which was ready to be defiant, “You may have seen finer in London: I can’t say; but this I know, you’ll find nothing like it in Farafield, search where you may!” “Thank you, Aunt Ford,” said Lucy faintly. “It is very pretty--but-- I was thinking of papa.”