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Parson Jack discreetly shut the door, and fell to studying the not over-clean drawing-room, which was tricked out with muslin draperies, cheap Japanese fans, photographs mostly of officers in the uniform of the Royal Marines and such artistic trifles as painted tambourines, sabots, drain-pipes, and milking-stools.
I think He would break those electric bulbs, and the "mantel-piece of pure onyx," and say reproachful things about the golden drain-pipes of the lavatory, and give the costly rug of duck-breasts to the poor, and sever the satin ribbon and invite the weary to rest and ease their aches in the consecrated chairs.
Twice, and a third time, she gave the bell an energetic pull, but no one answered. The gush of water from the roof tinkled loudly in the tin drain-pipes, but throughout the dwelling there was a tomb-like silence. Presently, though, Miss Eastman heard a "squadgy" tread that was steadily drawing nearer.
"It must be very dreadful for you," exclaimed Lady Mabel. "It must be intolerable!" cried Lord Mallow; "what, when the moments are golden, when 'Love takes up the glass of Time, and turns it in his glowing hands, when 'Love takes up the harp of life, and smites on all the chords with might, you have to devote your morning to watching the laying of drain-pipes and digging of sewers!
The field has recently been drained at the joint cost of landlord and tenant. The Rev. H. Munn provided the drain-pipes, and the occupiers paid for the labour, which latter came to £8, the amount being proportioned according to the size of each allotment.
I am making some slight alterations in the stables, on a plan of my own putting in mangers, and racks, and pillars, and partitions, from the St. Pancras Ironworks, making sanitary improvements and so on and I have to contend with so much idiocy in our local workmen. If I did not stand by and see drain-pipes put in and connections made, I believe the whole thing would go wrong."
'Not very much to a girl like you, who has never known the want of it. 'That's not true, darling. I never go home for the holidays that I don't hear father grumble about his poverty. The rents are so slow to come in; the tenants are always wanting drain-pipes and barns and things. Last Christmas his howls were awful. We are positive paupers. Mother has to wait ages for a cheque.
There were always dikes to be repaired, ditches to be deepened, drain-pipes to be laid or improved, or artificial manure to be carted, and Paul was active from break of day till nightfall, either on foot or on horseback, hurrying from one end of the estate to the other, everywhere ordering or giving a helping hand, and always leading his troops himself to fresh onslaughts against the resisting elements.
'The mantel-piece is of pure onyx, continued the show-woman, 'and the beehive upon the window-sill is made from one solid block of onyx; the rug is made of a hundred breasts of eider-down ducks, and the toilet-room you see in the corner is of the latest design, with gold-plated drain-pipes; the painted windows are from the Mother's poem, "Christ and Christmas," and that case contains complete copies of all the Mother's books. The chairs upon which the sacred person of the Mother had reposed were protected from sacrilegious touch by a broad band of satin ribbon.
If this occasional tendency toward exaggerating the importance of drain-pipes, window-curtains, and door-mats were to grow strong, and if girls, as a class, should be required to spend any large proportion of their time on the specialized history and sociology of feminine implements and tasks while the boys were still in the current of the affairs of the race, we should indeed want President Thomas of Bryn Mawr to repeat on a thousand lecture platforms her indignant assertion of the fact that "nothing more disastrous for women, or for men, can be conceived of than specialized education of women as a sex."
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