ught myself a really, really nice camera, and I
want to take mother a collection of views of the Court when we go home.
She will value it more than anything else, for I shall snap all her
favourite bits in the grounds, and take the interiors with time-
exposures. They will be nice to look at when we are away, and someone
else reigns in our stead!"

She shrugged her shoulders as she spoke, and Mrs Thornton patted her
arm with kindly encouragement.

"Nonsense--nonsense! You are tired, dear, and that makes you look at
things through blue spectacles. Come into the house, and we will have
tea, and discuss the great question of where my guests are to sit, if
anything so dreadful as a shower should happen! Two armchairs, you see,
half a dozen small ones, more or less unstable (if anyone over seven
stone attempts the green plush there'll be a catastrophe!), and one
sofa. Now, put your inventive brains together, and tell me what I can
do. There is plenty of room for more furniture, but no money to buy it,
alas!"

"Let them sit on the floor in rows; it would be ever so sociable!" said
naughty Mollie.

Ruth knitted her brows thoughtfully.

"Have you any chair-beds? We could make quite elegant lounges of them,
pushed up against the wall, covered with rugs and banked up with
cushions; or even out of two boards propped up at the sides, if the
worst came to the worst!"

"Oh-oh! Chair-beds! What an inspiration! I have two stored away in
the attic. They are old and decrepit, but that doesn't matter a bit.
They will look quite luxurious when the mattresses are covered with
sofa-blankets; but I don't know where the cushions are to come from. I
only possess these three, and they must stay where they are to hide the
patches in the chintz. I might perhaps borrow--"

"No, don't do anything of the kind. Use your pillows, and Ruth and I
will make frilled covers out of art-muslin, at threepence a yard. They
will look charming, and lighten up the dark corners. We are used to
that sort of work at home. We made a cosy corner for the drawing-room
out of old packing-cases and a Liberty curtain, and it is easier and
more comfortable than any professional one I ever saw. The silly
upholsterers always make the seats too high and narrow. We made a music
ottoman of the inside, and broke our backs lining it, and our nails
hammering in the tacks; but, dear me, how we did enjoy it, and how proud
we were when it was accomplished fo