ut against his pity all Saturday
evening. But on Sunday morning, when he thought of Violet, he relented.
He said he'd changed his mind about that old family seat. Violet could
call it what she liked.

She called it Granville.

The name, in large white letters, appeared presently in the fanlight
above the door.

* * * * *

At Woolridge's, on Monday morning in his dinner-hour, Mr. Ransome of the
counting-house strolled with great dignity and honor through seven
distinct departments as a customer. He ear-marked, for a beginning, and
subject always to the approval of a Lady, three distinct suites of
furniture which he proposed, most certainly, to purchase outright. None
of your hire-purchase systems for Mr. Ransome.

On Tuesday, accompanied by two ladies, he again appeared. Between two
violent blushes, and with an air which would have been light and offhand
if it could, Mr. Ransome presented to his friend, the foreman, his
mother--and Miss Usher. And as if the foreman had not sufficiently
divined her, Miss Usher's averted shoulders, burning cheeks, and lowered
eyelids made it impossible for him to forget that she was the Lady whose
approval was the ultimate condition of the deal.

After an immensity of time, in which Mr. Ransome's dinner hour was
swallowed up and lost, Miss Usher decided finally on the suite in
stained walnut, upholstered handsomely in plush, with a pattern which
Ransome imagined to be Oriental, a pattern of indefinite design in a
yellowish drab and heavy blue upon a ground of crimson. A splendid
suite. The overmantle alone was worth the nineteen pounds nineteen
shillings he paid for it.

The furnishing of the chamber of the love knots was arranged for,
decorously, between Mrs. Ransome and the foreman. Over every item, from
the wardrobe in honey-colored maple picked out with black, to the china
"set" with crimson reeds and warblers on it, Ranny's friend, the
foreman, communed with Ranny's mother in an intimate aside; and Ranny's
mother, in another aside of even more accentuated propriety, appealed to
flaming cheeks and lowered eyelids and a mouth that gave an almost
inarticulate assent. The eyelids refused to open on Ranny where he
stood, turning his back on the women, while he shook dubiously the
footrail of the iron double bedstead to test the joints; and the mouth
refused to speak when Ranny was heard complaining that the bedstead was
about three sizes too large fo