Dixon held, the room was furnished. All kinds of
human and civilized suggestion breathed from the table and the bookcases.
The contriving mind, with all its happy arts for the cheating and
adorning of life, was to be felt.
Mr. Tyson took it differently.
"Look here!"--he said peremptorily to Mrs. Dixon--"you mind what you're
doing with that table. It's worth a mint of money."
The Dixons looked at it curiously, but coldly. To them it was nothing but
a writing-table with drawers made out of a highly polished outlandish
wood, with little devices of gilt rails, and drawer-furnishings, and tiny
figures, and little bits of china "let in," which might easily catch a
duster, thought Mrs. Dixon, and "mak' trooble." That it had belonged to a
French dramatist under Louis Quinze, and then to a French Queen; that the
plaques were Sevres, and the table as a whole beyond the purse of any but
a South African or American man of money, was of course nothing to her.
"It bets me," said Dixon, in the tone of one making conversation, "why
Muster Melrose didn't gie us orders to unpack soom more o' them cases.
Summat like thatten"--he pointed to the table--"wud ha' lukit fine i'
the drawin'-room."
Tyson made no reply. He was a young man of strong will and taciturn
habit; and he fully realized that if he once began discussing with Dixon
the various orders received from Mr. Edmund Melrose with regard to his
home-coming, during the preceding weeks, the position that he, Tyson,
intended to maintain with regard to that gentleman would not be made any
easier.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25