We know who was
sitting in it already; and thus she was received by Bad Luck at once
into her very lap, and clutched about securely by that unpleasant
lady's cold and skinny arms. She looked up at Fritzing with a shiver
to remark wonderingly that the room, in spite of its big fire and its
smallness, was like ice, but her lips fell apart in a frozen stare and
she gazed blankly past him at the wall behind his head. "Look," she
whispered, pointing with a horrified forefinger. And Fritzing, turning
quickly, was just in time to snatch a row of cheap coloured portraits
from the wall and fling them face downwards under the table before
Tussie came in to ask if he could do anything.
The portraits were those of all the reigning princes of Germany and
had been put up as a delicate compliment by the representative of the
Minehead furnishers, while Priscilla and Fritzing were taking leave of
Baker's Farm; and the print Priscilla's eye had lighted on was the
portrait of her august parent, smiling at her. He was splendid in
state robes and orders, and there was a charger, and an obviously
expensive looped-up curtain, and much smoke as of nations furiously
raging together in the background, and outside this magnificence
meandered the unmeaning rosebuds of Priscilla's cheap wallpaper.
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