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She slipped off the bracelet and held it up to him. "Oh, I can go you one better," he said with a laugh; and pulling a morocco case from his pocket he flung it down among the scent-bottles. Susy opened the case automatically, staring at the pearl because she was afraid to look again at Nick. "Ellie gave you this?" she asked at length. "Yes. She gave me this." There was a pause.
I kept my senses thegither, whilk has been thought wonderful by all that ever saw the place; and I helped myself with my hands as gallantly as I could, and to the bottom I came. There I lay for half a moment; but the thoughts of a gallows is worth all the salts and scent-bottles in the world for bringing a man to himself. Up I sprang, like a four-year-auld colt.
He was no longer in his old garret room, but in a pretty apartment, with bunches of rosebuds on the walls, and scent-bottles on the toilet-table, and muslin curtains, and a bright carpet, and pretty book-shelves, and brackets, and lovely child-faces in the engravings; and on a broad table was a little easel, and a paint-box, and drawing-paper; and here too was his old box with the violin strings.
"Here they are, ma'am!" screamed Mrs Brown. She was wrong. Mrs Brown was usually wrong. Peter alone was deposited before the eager gaze of Mrs Sudberry, who fainted away with disappointment. Mrs Brown said "be off" to Peter, and applied scent-bottles to her mistress.
A travelling table, with maps and a few books, stood against the wall, and one more article completed our furniture, an exceedingly neat toilet table, the base of which was a flat-topped portmanteau, concealed by a cunning device of chintz and muslin; this, covered with the usual arrangement of brushes, mirror, scent-bottles, &c. threw an air of civilization over the establishment, which was increased by the presence of an immense sponging-bath, that, being flat and circular, could be fitted underneath a bed.
And on the top of the house, above the large attic, where the white mice ran in the twilight an infinite, unexplored wonderland of childish treasures, glass beads, empty scent-bottles still sweet, thrum of coloured silks, among its lumber a flat space of roof, railed round, gave a view of the neighbouring steeples; for the house, as I said, stood near a great city, which sent up heavenwards, over the twisting weather-vanes, not seldom, its beds of rolling cloud and smoke, touched with storm or sunshine.
Hence the machine-made frivolities of the most respectable homes, the hair-brushes with backs of stamped silver, the scent-bottles of imitation cut-glass, the draperies with printed rose-buds on them, the general artificial-floweriness and flimsiness and superfluity of naughtiness of our domestic art.
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