Laurence said, indulgently, "I shouldn't feel at ease in the drawing-room. So I shall not disturb Mama. I had thought of suggesting that the children should be given another room in which to play, but to tell the truth I'm tired of moving furniture about. The fact is I miss my vicarage study: it was my own."

"Yes, nobody at the vicarage ever thought of interrupting him, you see," Edith explained.

"Well," said John, roused by the necessity of getting Joan started upon her journey to interview Robert de Baudricourt, "there are several empty bedrooms upstairs. One of them could be transformed into a study for Laurence."

"That means more arranging of furniture," Laurence objected.

"Then there's the garret," said John. "You'd find your bureau up there."

Laurence smiled in order to show how well he understood that the suggestion was only playfulness on John's side and how little he minded the good-natured joke.

"There is one room which might be made—ah—conducive to good work, though at present it is occupied by a quantity of apples; they, however, could easily be moved."

"But I moved them in there from what is now your room," Hilda protested.

"It is good for apples to be frequently moved," said Laurence, kindly. "In fact, the oftener they are moved, the better. And this holds good equally for pippins, codlins, and russets. On the other hand it means I shall lose half a day's work, because even if I could make a temporary beginning anywhere else, I should have to superintend the arrangement of the furniture."

"But I thought you didn't want to have any more furniture arranging to do," Hilda contested, acrimoniously. "There are two quite empty rooms at the other end of the passage."

"Yes, but I like the room in which the apples are. John will appreciate my desire for a sympathetic milieu."

"Come, come, we will move the apples," John promised, hurriedly.

Better that the apples should roll from room to room eternally than that he should be driven into offering Laurence a corner of the library, for he suspected that notwithstanding the disclaimer this was his brother-in-law's real objective.

"It doesn't say anything about apples in the encyclopedia," muttered Harold in 

 Prev. P 58/268 next