"You don't slip on parquet as you do on boards," said Julia. "You see, we haven't very much left, and we must have two big basket chairs, a couple of small chairs, and a stool or two; and we must have a writing-table. And then we haven't got any sort of an over-mantel, no sort of a looking-glass, and no pictures, so say nothing of a stand or two to put plants in. I don't see where it is all coming from--still less the piano. Oh, I haven't given up all idea of the piano. That we must squeeze out of our dress allowance." "You don't think," said Maudie, "that we could put the piano off for another year?" "No," said Julia, decidedly, "it's no good spoiling the ship for a ha'porth of tar." CHAPTER X A WEIGHTY BUSINESS I have always had a tender feeling about the great Idiot Asylum which teaches its children by means of keeping shop, with real pennies and real sweeties. Now if there was one thing on which Julia Whittaker prided herself, it was that she could carry color in her eye. A great many people have the same belief, and it is a point upon which a very large number entirely deceive themselves. On the very afternoon of the day that they had decided on the chintz for the curtains and covers, the sisters hied themselves to that part of London which is familiarly known as "the High Street." Knowing that their mother would be away from the Park during all the hours which intervened between breakfast and dinner, so the girls determined that they would get something which would serve as lunch in one of the large shops in Kensington High Street which catered for that particular meal. Thus they had several hours before them for selection and consideration. "Maudie," said Julia, as they walked into the carpet room at John Barker's, "there's one thing we've never given a thought to." "What's that?" asked Maudie. "The blinds. And, mind you, the blinds will cost us a pretty penny." "Won't those we have do?" Maudie suggested. "Oh Maudie!" "No, I suppose they won't," Maudie admitted. "Of course," Julia went on, "mother was right enough when she had those green blinds to match the bedrooms at the back of the house--they were quite good enough for a playroom, but they would be horrid for us. Well, that keeps us down to the idea of a cord for the carpet. We want to look at carpets," she said to a gentlemanly young man who came up asking her pleasure. "No, nothing so expensive as that," she continued, casting reflective eyes upon a very beautiful carpet square. "We want something that will be--I think you call them a cord--something in deep blue, or deep crimson, or a rich green." "I'm afraid," said the young man, shaking his head doubtfully, "that we haven't anything quite in those colors. We have a blue, and we have a terra-cotta. What size, madam?"