From the brown paper wrappings emerged a large plaque of Oriental pottery. Mr. Hancock manoeuvred it upright, holding it opposite to her on the floor, supported against his knees. “There—what do you think of that?” he murmured bending over it. Miriam’s eyes went from the veinings on his flushed forehead to the violent soft rich red and blue and dull green covering the huge concave disc from side to side. It appeared to represent a close thicket of palm fronds, thin flat fingers, superimposed and splaying out in all directions over the deep blue background. In the centre appeared the head and shoulders of an enormous tiger, coming sinuously forward, one great paw planted on the greenery near the foremost middle edge of the plaque.
“M’m,” said Miriam staring.
Mr. Hancock rubbed the surface of the plaque with his forefinger. Miriam came near and ran her finger down across the rich smooth reliefs.
“Where shall I put it?” said Mr. Hancock.
“I should have it somewhere on that side of the room, where the light falls on it.”
Mr. Hancock raised the plaque in his arms and walked with it to the wall raising it just above his head and holding it in place between the two pictures of Devonshire. They faded to a small muddled dinginess, and the buff and green patterning of the wallpaper showed shabby and dim.
“It looks somehow too big or too small or something. … I should have it down level with the eyes, so that you can look straight into it.”
Mr. Hancock carefully lowered it.
“Let me come and hold it so that you can look,” said Miriam advancing.
“It’s too heavy for you,” said Mr. Hancock straining his head back and moving it from side to side.
“I believe it would look best,” said Miriam “across the corner of the room as you come in—where the corner cupboard is—I’m sure it would,” she said eagerly and went back to the centre of the carpet.
Mr. Hancock smiled towards the small oak cupboard fixed low in the angle of the wall.
“We should have to move the cupboard,” he said dubiously and carried the heavy plate to the indicated place.
“That’s simply lovely,” said Miriam in delight as he held the plaque in front of the long narrow façade of black oak.
Mr. Hancock lowered the plaque to the floor and propped it crosswise against the angle.
“It would be no end of a business fixing it up,” he murmured crossing to her side. They stood looking at the beautiful surface blurred a little in the light by its backward tilt. They gazed fascinated as the plaque slid gently forward and fell heavily breaking into two pieces.
They regarded one another quietly and went forward to gather up the fragments. The broken sides gritted together as Miriam held hers steady for the other to be fitted to it. When they were joined the crack was hardly visible.
“That’ll be a nice piece of work for Messrs. Nikkoo,” said Mr. Hancock with a little laugh, “we’d better get it in back behind the sofa for the present.” They spread the brown paper over the brilliant surfaces and stood up. Miriam’s perceptions raced happily along. How had he known that she cared for things? She was not sure that she did … not in the way that he did. … How did he know that she had noticed any of his things? Because she had blurted out “Oh what a perfectly lovely picture” when he showed her the painting of his cousin? But that was because he admired his cousin and her brother had painted the picture and he admired them both and she had not known about this when she spoke.
“Did you see this month’s Studio?” she asked shyly.
He turned to the table and took up the uppermost of the pile.
“There’s a lovely green picture,” said Miriam, “at least I like it.”
Mr. Hancock turned pages ruminatively.
“Those are good things,” he said flattening the open page.
“Japanese Flower Decorations,” read Miriam looking at the reproduced squares of flowering branches arranged with a curious naturalness in strange flat dishes. They fascinated her at once—stiff and real, shooting straight up from the earth and branching out. They seemed coloured. She turned pages and gazed.
“How nice and queer.”
Mr. Hancock bent smiling. “They’ve got a whole science of this you know,” he said; “it takes them years to learn it; they apprentice themselves and study for years. …”
Miriam looked incredulously at the simple effects—just branches placed “artistically” in flat dishes and fixed somehow at the base amongst little heaps of stones.
“It looks easy enough.”
Mr. Hancock laughed. “Well—you try. We’ll get some broom or something, and you shall try your hand. You’d better read the article. Look here—they’ve got names for all the angles. … ‘Shin’—he read with amused admiring delight, ‘sho-shin’ … there’s no end of it.”
Miriam fired and hesitated. “It’s like a sort of mathematics. … I’m no good at mathematics.”
“I expect you could get very good results … we’ll try. They carry it to such extraordinary lengths because there’s all sorts of social etiquette mixed up with it—you can’t have a branch pointing at a guest for instance—it would be rude.”
“No wonder it takes them years,” said Miriam.
They laughed together, moving vaguely about the room.
Mr. Hancock looked thoughtfully at the celluloid tray of hairpins on the mantelshelf, and blew the dust from it … there was something she remembered in some paper, very forcibly written,
