Orley Farm

to be done, and would not show his face till it was over. He ought to have taken the matter in hand himself, and would have done so had not his mind been full of other things. He himself was a man terribly wronged and wickedly injured, and could not therefore in these present months interfere much in the active doing of kindnesses. His hours were spent in thinking how he might best obtain justice⁠—how he might secure his pound of flesh. He only wanted his own, but that he would have;⁠—his own, with due punishment on those who had for so many years robbed him of it. He therefore did not attend at the presentation of the furniture.

“And now we’ll go upstairs, if you please,” said Mrs. Mason, with that gracious smile for which she was so famous. “Mr. Green, you must come too. Dear Mrs. Green has been so very kind to my two girls; and now I have got a few articles⁠—they are of the very newest fashion, and I do hope that Mrs. Green will like them.” And so they all went up into the schoolroom.

“There’s a new fashion come up lately,” said Mrs. Mason as she walked along the corridor, “quite new:⁠—of metallic furniture. I don’t know whether you have seen any.” Mrs. Green said she had not seen any as yet.

“The Patent Steel Furniture Company makes it, and it has got very greatly into vogue for small rooms. I thought that perhaps you would allow me to present you with a set for your drawing-room.”

“I’m sure it is very kind of you to think of it,” said Mrs. Green.

“Uncommonly so,” said Mr. Green. But both Mr. Green and Mrs. Green knew the lady, and their hopes did not run high.

And then the door was opened and there stood the furniture to view. There stood the furniture, except the three subtracted chairs, and the loo table. The claw and leg of the table indeed were standing there, but the top was folded up and lying on the floor beside it. “I hope you’ll like the pattern,” began Mrs. Mason. “I’m told that it is the prettiest that has yet been brought out. There has been some little accident about the screw of the table, but the smith in the village will put that to rights in five minutes. He lives so close to you that I didn’t think it worth while to have him up here.”

“It’s very nice,” said Mrs. Green, looking round her almost in dismay.

“Very nice indeed,” said Mr. Green, wondering in his mind for what purpose such utter trash could have been manufactured, and endeavouring to make up his mind as to what they might possibly do with it. Mr. Green knew what chairs and tables should be, and was well aware that the things before him were absolutely useless for any of the ordinary purposes of furniture.

“And they are the most convenient things in the world,” said Mrs. Mason, “for when you are going to change house you pack them all up again in those boxes. Wooden furniture takes up so much room, and is so lumbersome.”

“Yes, it is,” said Mrs. Green.

“I’ll have them all put up again and sent down in the cart tomorrow.”

“Thank you; that will be very kind,” said Mr. Green, and then the ceremony of the presentation was over. On the following day the boxes were sent down, and Mrs. Mason might have abstracted even another chair without detection, for the cases lay unheeded from month to month in the curate’s still unfurnished room. “The fact is they cannot afford a carpet,” Mrs. Mason afterwards said to one of her daughters, “and with such things as those they are quite right to keep them up till they can be used with advantage. I always gave Mrs. Green credit for a good deal of prudence.”

And then, when the show was over, they descended again into the drawing-room⁠—Mr. Green and Mrs. Mason went first, and Creusa followed. Penelope was thus so far behind as to be able to speak to her friend without being heard by the others.

“You know mamma,” she said, with a shrug of her shoulders and a look of scorn in her eye.

“The things are very nice.”

“No, they are not, and you know they are not. They are worthless; perfectly worthless.”

“But we don’t want anything.”

“No; and if there had been no pretence of a gift it would all have been very well. What will Mr. Green think?”

“I rather think he likes iron chairs;” and then they were in the drawing-room.

Mr. Mason did not appear till dinnertime, and came in only just in time to give his arm to Mrs. Green. He had had letters to write⁠—a letter to Messrs. Round and Crook, very determined in its tone; and a letter also to Mr. Dockwrath, for the little attorney had so crept on in the affair that he was now corresponding with the principal. “I’ll teach those fellows in Bedford Row to know who I am,” he had said to himself more than once, sitting on his high stool at Hamworth.

And then came the Groby Park Christmas dinner. To speak the truth Mr. Mason had himself gone to the neighbouring butcher, and ordered the surloin of beef, knowing that it would be useless to trust to orders conveyed through his wife. He had seen the piece of meat put on one side for him, and had afterwards traced it on to the kitchen dresser. But nevertheless when it appeared at table it had been sadly mutilated. A steak had been cut off the full breadth of it⁠—a monstrous cantle from out its fair proportions. The lady had seen the jovial, thick, ample size of the goodly joint, and her heart had been unable to spare it. She had made an effort and turned away, saying to herself that the responsibility was all with him. But it was of no use. There was that within her which