The partition-wall
between the unused drawing-room and the schoolroom was broken
down, in order to admit of folding-doors; the "ingenious"
upholsterer of the town (and what town does not boast of the
upholsterer full of contrivances and resources, in opposition to
the upholsterer of steady capital and no imagination, who looks
down with uneasy contempt on ingenuity?) had come in to give his
opinion, that "nothing could be easier than to convert a bathroom
into a bedroom, by the assistance of a little drapery to conceal
the shower-bath," the string of which was to be carefully
concealed, for fear that the unconscious occupier of the bath-bed
might innocently take it for a bell-rope. The professional cook
of the town had been already engaged to take up her abode for a
month at Mr. Bradshaw's, much to the indignation of Betsy, who
became a vehement partisan of Mr. Cranworth, as soon as ever she
heard of the plan of her deposition from sovereign authority in
the kitchen, in which she had reigned supreme for fourteen years.
Mrs. Bradshaw sighed and bemoaned herself in all her leisure
moments, which were not many, and wondered why their house was to
be turned into an inn for this Mr. Donne, when everybody knew
that the "George" was good enough for the Cranworths, who never
thought of asking the electors to the Hall;--and they had lived
at Cranworth ever since Julius Caesar's time, and if that was not
being an old family, she did not know what was.
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