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A black and white sketch doesn't give any definite idea of this charmer's charms, but some time I'll fill it in, hair, sweet little hat, gown, and eyes, all in golden brown, a cape of tawny sable slipping off her arm, a knot of yellow primroses in her girdle, carved-oak background, and the afternoon sun coming through a stained-glass window. Great Jove!
There was a ponderous carved-oak bookcase on one side of the room; on all the others the paraphernalia of sporting gunnery and fishing-tackle, small-swords, whips, and boxing-gloves artistically arranged against the panelling; and over the mantelpiece an elaborate collection of meerschaum pipes.
As to posing itself, one had not a thing to do but sit perfectly still! One got such a good rest from being too much on one's feet! And they had placed for her such a splendid carved-oak chair! When she took her seat, all at once she had felt as if at home again. There were immense windows; she had had all the fresh air she wished, and she did enjoy fresh air!
No matter that some of the carved-oak furniture was fresh from the chisel of the carver, while other things were the spoil of old Belgian churches; that the tapestry in one saloon was as old as the days of its designer, Boucher, and that in the adjoining chamber made on purpose for Arden Court at the Gobelins manufactory of his Imperial Majesty Napoleon III. No matter that the gilt-leather hangings in one room had hung there in the reign of Charles I., while those in another were supplied by a West-end upholsterer.
Eight names in all, but nine chairs, and the ninth no ordinary, cane-seated chair like the rest, but a beautiful, high-backed, carved-oak erection, ecclesiastical in design, which looked strangely out of place in the bare room.
His sermons he kept in a handsome old carved-oak bureau against the wall, where for he had been a dozen years in Underwood, and had worked through all the fasts and feasts a great many times he had executed a classification, and knew where to put his hand on the Christmas sermons, and those for the saints' days, and even for exceptional occasions, such as funerals, almost in the dark.
I took a sketch of her during service, as she sat under the dark carved-oak canopy, with this Latin inscription over her head: There ought to be a law against a woman's making a picture of herself, unless she is willing to sit and be sketched.
She went in among the gay-looking crowd the old women in wondrous caps, the sprinkling of soldiers, the prosperous citizens and citizenesses in their Sunday splendour and made her way to a quiet corner remote from the great carved-oak pulpit and the high altar a shadowy corner behind a massive cluster of columns, and near a little wooden door in one of the great portals, that opened and shut with a clanging noise now and then, and beside which a dilapidated-looking old man kept watch over a shell-shaped marble basin of holy water, and offered a brush dipped in the sacred fluid to devout passers-by.
'Would you like me to play to you a little? Anne asked, when Hyacinth had returned and was sitting in the carved-oak chimney-corner, looking thoughtful and picturesque. 'Oh no, please don't! Besides, I know you can't' 'No, thank goodness! exclaimed Anne.
Gently, reverently, the girls lifted the basket which was to have furnished their own repast, laid it on the carved-oak chair, and laid on its lid the painted card; then for a moment they stood side by side, gazing round the room, seeing in imagination the scene which would follow the return of the family from church . . . the incredulity, the amaze, the blind mystification, the joy. . . . Peg beamed in anticipation of the delight of the youngsters; Margaret had the strangest, eeriest feeling of looking straight into a sweet, worn face; of feeling the clasp of work-worn hands.
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