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When Keir began to explore the financial aspect of the adventure he realized that the cheapness of Paragon Place was in its favour. No. 3 was rented at 10/6 a week, with the rates included, and he supposed that it would be sufficient for them to furnish the kitchen and parlour and one bedroom.

He spent an evening in his bed-sitting-room working out a budget, though its details were somewhat theoretical. He had had very little experience of domestic ways and means.

His weekly budget ran as follows:

Rent and rates		10	6
Clothing. Self		2	6
Sybil		3	6
Insurances		1	4
Housekeeping—at 15-each	1	10	0
Gas		1	6
Coal. 1 cwt.		2	0
Holidays		1	6
Tobacco		1	0
Sundries		2	6
	—	—	—
	2	16	4
	—	—	—

There were many omissions in this budget, but he was not aware of them at the time. He had allowed nothing for soap and cleaning materials, for repairs to shoes and boots, for matches and firewood, for the possible advent of children. He had estimated the housekeeping costs at fifteen shillings a head without considering the multifarious details, or the muddle Sybil would make of them to begin with. His earnings totalled some four pounds a week, and he could place his savings at a pound a week. Certainly, he would have to spend less on books, but in Sybil he would have a book more enthralling than a whole circulating library.

It was not that Keir was mean. He was adding to his responsibilities, but he had not renounced his ambition, that urge towards separativeness and independence. He had his vision. He saw no reason why he should not become a member of the firm or the master of a business of his own. He was not a union man. He knew that if he saved money and gained in experience and grip, he might make himself somehow inevitable. Mr. Samson had no children, and Mr. Hoad—Sneak Hoad, as the men called him—had one small daughter, and the firm was prosperous, and since it employed no union labour, it was not obstructed by having to haggle with local trade secretaries. Certainly, there had been attempts to rope the men in, but old Samson was still John Bull.

Actually, Keir did sound Mr. Samson on the subject. He said that he was saving money, and that he was ready to serve his term and gather experience—but would there be any chance—? Old Samson eyed him with quizzical gravity.

“Want to be one of the exploiters, Keir?”

“I’m not afraid of responsibility, sir.”

“Ah, that’s it—that’s the whole thing in a nutshell. A man’s got to make himself fit to give orders. Most men only make themselves fit to take them. Well, yes—I’ve got it in mind.”

Keir’s dark eyes smouldered.

“That means a lot to me, sir. I’d make it my business not to let the firm down. I shall have seen the inside of things.”

Mr. Samson smiled down his nose.

“Getting married, aren’t you?”

“Yes. But I don’t think that will make any difference.”

“Perhaps not—Keir. A working man’s—job—is so much tied up with his wife. More so—these days—I think—. Is she—?”

“She’s been in service. She’s keen.”

“Not a shop girl. Well, that’s all to the good. She ought to know how to manage.—Just one thing, Keir. Don’t think I’m meddling—but if a chap’s going to rise—”

He looked at Keir kindly, and Keir understood.

He said: “She’s one of the gentle sort, and quick—sensitive—you know. She’d like things nice—but I think she’d always be ready to work for them.”

Mr. Samson said: “Well, that’s the stuff.”

Keir arranged to take over No. 3 Paragon Place from the Santers, who were moving into the new cottage on the 1st of October, and Sybil and Keir fixed their wedding for the first Saturday in October. It was to be a very quiet and inexpensive affair at St. John’s Church, Kingham. An uncle of Sybil’s who was door-porter at one of the big London stores had promised to come down and give her away. Keir had trouble in finding a best man, but he persuaded one of Mr. Samson’s painters to act for him. He would have been quite satisfied if the ceremony had been performed at a register office, but Sybil wanted to be married in a church.

Meanwhile there was the furniture to be bought. The honeymoon was to be limited to a long week-end at Hastings, and Sybil and Keir had decided that No. 3 should be furnished and ready to receive them on their return.

Sybil was full of ideas on furnishing—or, rather, she had absorbed her ideas from the windows of Messrs. Bond & Beaverbrook, Kingham’s universal providers. She dreamed in suites. She wanted mahogany for the parlour, yes, and a Chesterfield sofa, and painted wood for one bedroom. Messrs. Bond & Beaverbrook stocked a series of standardized suites at standardized prices, though they labelled them with various names—“The Hampton,” “The Richmond,” “The Twickenham.” Sybil led Keir to the slaughter. Her enthusiasm was a little flushed and self-important.

“Of course—we could do it on the instalment system. Isn’t ‘The Richmond’ just sweet?”

Keir had visualized their operations as a careful selection of specimens purchased at various less impressive shops. Bargains? Well, not exactly that, perhaps. He had supposed that some of the necessities could be purchased second-hand. A bedstead might be just as good a bedstead even though somebody else had slept on it, and an hour or two’s work with a brush and a pot of enamel would put the thing right. But Sybil’s naïve enthusiasm for the new home was—like her person—innocently seductive.

“No, cash down, kid. No instalment business. Besides—we should get a discount for cash.”

She had an arm linked in his, and she held him to the window.

“It does seem a lot of money, Keir, doesn’t it? But, after all, it’s common sense to buy good things. They’ll last us a lifetime.”

“Yes, that’s true.”

“And we’ve got to think of having a better cottage. Oh—I do want you to have a glass-fronted bookcase for your books.”

“I can do with something simple. I can make it myself, if it comes to that.”

She squeezed his arm.

“So you could, Keir. Aren’t you clever?”

The furnishing of No. 3 Paragon Place cost Keir some ninety pounds. Sybil had her “Richmond” suite for the bedroom, at the price of £12.13.6. The parlour, with a Chesterfield sofa, and two easy chairs at two guineas each, proved more expensive than the bedroom. The kitchen furniture was of white wood and included a cupboarded dresser at £2.11.6, a table, three Windsor chairs, and an additional cupboard. But, as in public finance, it was the supplementary estimates that upset the balance of Keir’s budget. It had never occurred to him that a small house could develop such a capacity for assimilating inorganic matter. There were carpets, linoleum, curtains, yards and yards of cretonne; linen, some of it in threes, some of it in sixes; bedroom crockery, fenders, kitchen utensils. The kitchen was an absolute ogre in its appetite; there were articles that Keir had never seen before and did not know the use of.

“What the dickens is that?”

“A whisk.”

Then there was the china and the cutlery and the silver.

“We must have a clock, Keir.”

“What for? Won’t our watches do?”

“Everybody has a clock.”

“For the kitchen. All right.”

“We ought to have one in the—the drawing-room, too, really.”

“That can wait a bit.”

“Oh, yes. Let me look at my list again. Mats, a doormat, two doormats. Let’s see—we have done the blankets, haven’t we?”

“Blessed if I can remember. Anyway, we shall want them.”

“And a small mangle or wringer.”

Keir was getting tired. He had said yes to so many things with a sense of their inevitableness, but when Sybil was tempted by the serpent to covet a mahogany gramophone cabinet, Keir stood firm. In his case the serpent had taken the shape of a most persuasive and talkative young salesman whose motto was: “You find the girl, sir; we find everything else.” Almost Keir came to hate that young man with his facile smile and his infernal catalogue.

“I think that’s about our limit, Syb.”

It was, and sensing a vague restiveness in her Adam, Sybil refrained.

“You—have—been good to me, Keir. Won’t it be lovely arranging all the things? Our things.”

She was such a happy, seductive creature.