LITMIR.BIZ

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the 'dew off Ben Nevis,' 'fine crusted port,' 'pure dinner sherry' – we might excuse a bit of exaggeration in the names, provided the liquids themselves were genuine. 'Solid gold chains,' made of an alloy containing only six ounces of real gold to eighteen of baser metal, are now displayed in glittering array in shop-windows; and many 'real gold' articles have only a thin film of gold to cover a substratum of cheap metal. Soon after the Abyssinian war, when some of King Theodore's golden trinkets were exhibited in England, Birmingham or London or both produced 'Abyssinian gold' chains, watches, and jewellery in which real gold was conspicuous by its absence. Following this precedent, the same or other makers introduced 'Ashanti' gold jewellery after the little war in which Sir Garnet Wolseley was engaged; and the auriferous quality of the one was about equal to that of the other.

      But apart from actual roguery, other modes of attracting customers are noticeable for a kind of whimsical audacity. A hairdresser, who sells bear's grease, buys or rents a small bear, which he placards profusely, and writes up, 'Here, and at Archangel.' A furniture-dealer advertises, for twelve or eighteen months together, that he is enlarging his premises, and will sell off his stock at low prices, to prevent the articles from being injured by dust and dirt – his stock being quietly renewed from time to time, and the prices remaining pretty nearly the same as before. A draper covers half the front of his house with inscriptions relating to an alleged shipwreck or conflagration, to denote how very cheaply he can sell the salvage. 'Dreadful depression in trade,' 'bankrupt stock,' 'ruinous sacrifice,' are well-known manœuvres. We hear of 'Hampshire rabbits' that never saw Hampshire, and 'Newcastle salmon' that were certainly neither caught nor pickled at Newcastle; 'Cheshire cheese' made in other shires; 'Melton-Mowbray pies,' 'Bath buns,' and 'Banbury cakes' made in London – these we can understand as extensions in the production of certain articles at one time localised.

      The artistic or fine-art world is much troubled with 'making pretend,' often involving white-lies of considerable magnitude. 'Old Roman coins' produced in an out-of-the-way workshop in London or Birmingham; 'Fine old china' fabricated within a recent period; a 'Genuine Rubens' that originated somewhere near Wardour Street; a 'Landscape after Claude' (very much after) – are sorrowfully known to purchasers endowed with more money than brains. At one of the Great Exhibitions, a French firm displayed two pearl necklaces, of which one was valued (if we remember rightly) at fifty-fold as much as the other, and yet none but a practised observer could discriminate between them. The exhibitor wished to shew, and did shew, how skilfully he could make mock-pearls imitate real – but what a temptation to 'making pretend!'

      THE LAST OF THE HADDONS

CHAPTER XX. – MRS TIPPER AT HOME

      The next morning I took care to find employment for Lilian which would require the use of her mind as well as her hands. Indeed we were all as busy as bees, there being a great deal still to be done in the way of putting our little home in order. Fortunately, as it happened for us, the builder had been obliged to make the rooms larger and less formal in shape than are the generality of cottage parlours, in order to carry out the architect's design for the exterior of the building, so we had two good sitting-rooms. Our drawing-room gave ample opportunity for the display of taste; and Mrs Tipper had begged me to select the furniture, choose the paper for the walls, and so forth. I did my best, in the way of endeavouring to make an effective background for the by no means few works of art which had arrived from Fairview, and were now to be unpacked and arranged by Lilian and me. Mrs Tipper had been a little disappointed at my selecting sober tints such as French gray for the walls, &c.; confessing that for her part she liked plenty of colour. Indeed the dear little woman too fondly remembered the best parlour in the little cottage at Holloway, where she informed me gay plumaged birds wandered up and down the walls amidst roses and tulips, to take kindly to more sober tints. And it required some diplomacy gracefully to decline two heavy lumps of china, supposed to represent Windsor Castle, which had been carefully preserved as relics of old times, and which were now brought forth from their beds of wool and presented as Mrs Tipper's contribution in the way of fine art for the drawing-room mantel-piece, with the information that they had been purchased at Greenwich fair and brought home as a surprise by 'John.' But I contrived to make it apparent that we already had as many ornaments as we knew what to do with; and the happy thought occurred to me to suggest that perhaps she would like to have the gifts which had been presented by her husband on the mantel-piece in her own room. At which she was fain to confess that such had been her desire. 'Only I thought you wanted a little more colour in the drawing-room, you know, dears; and I should be sorry to be selfish.'

      But as our work progressed she acknowledged that the effect was 'elegant;' though I knew that term did not mean the highest eulogy in her estimation. The dainty collection of Sèvres and Dresden, which had belonged to Lilian's mother, the pictures, few valuable books, and the roses and lilies of the chintz, imparted quite colour enough to the room to satisfy us two. But it gave us enough to do to arrange it all. To the portrait of Lilian's mother, a really valuable painting, the costly work of a celebrated Academician (another extravagance of Mr Farrar's, deplored by Marian), was of course assigned the place of honour. She must have been a very lovely woman, of the delicate refined type of beauty, which expresses so much to certain minds, and the artist had evidently worked con amore. He had seen the soul beneath, and depicted what he had seen. I could well understand the thought which had suggested the simple white flowing dress and loosened hair, with no ornament save a star above the broad white brow, and which had caused him so to pose the figure as to impart the idea that it was floating upwards.

      I have heard that Mr Farrar was not a little disappointed in the picture, considering the style too severe, and that he regretted not having stipulated for velvet and diamonds. But the picture had brought fresh fame to the artist; crowds of admirers gathering round the 'Morning Star,' as it was called, when it was on view at the Academy, though it was generally believed to be an ideal rather than a portrait. To Lilian it was a priceless treasure.

      Mrs Tipper was in the outset a little afraid lest Lilian should do too much for her strength; but she presently took my hint and objected no more. I kept Lilian at work with me until we were both too fairly tired out to be able to indulge in any sentimental regrets. Two or three days passed thus, hammering and nailing in the mornings, chintz-cover making in the afternoons; in a steady, methodical, business-like fashion, until it was evident that very soon there would be nothing left for us to do, if Mrs Tipper and Becky remained firm in their determination not to allow us to give them any assistance in the everyday work of the house.

      When our work was at length completed, we flattered ourselves that a prettier room than the cottage parlour was not to be found in all the country round. The pictures and china, Lilian's easel and pet books and birds, the pretty chintz furniture, and the rare flowers which found their way to us, did indeed form a very charming whole – a room which looked a great deal more like the home of a gentlewoman than did any of the rooms at Fairview; the latter being too gorgeous in the way of gilding and upholstery to be fitting receptacles for works of art.

      I was not a little amused at Miss Farrar's very openly expressed astonishment, when, about a fortnight after our departure from Fairview, she found time for making the promised call upon us.

      'Well!' she involuntarily exclaimed; 'you have made it look pretty!' presently adding – 'for a cottage, you know. I am sure you need not mind any one coming to see you here. I shouldn't mind living here myself, I really shouldn't! I cannot think how you have contrived to make it look so comy fo!'

      Then she a little curiously asked to be shewn the rest of the house. And although all our art treasures had been gathered together in this one room, she found that the other part of the house was well and prettily furnished; an air of comfort if not of luxury pervading every nook and corner; nothing being wanting from garret to cellar. In fact there had been no lack of means; Mrs Tipper had money enough and to spare for the furnishing, without drawing upon Lilian's two hundred and fifty pounds received for the piano. It had turned out there were some hundreds lying in Mrs Tipper's name at the banker's. She had not taken her brother's words so literally as he intended them to be taken; drawing barely sixty or seventy pounds a year of the two hundred which had been settled upon her; and consequently it had been left to accumulate; and as she smilingly explained, Mr Markham informed her there was quite a little fortune awaiting her. 'So I've been saving up a fortune without knowing it,

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