In the dining-room the prim, thin Chippendale furniture was ranged against a pale-coloured wall, while the round table, with its fine damask and Georgian silver, and the soft lamplight illumining a great bowl of flowers, was somehow suggestive of brilliant talk and dainty fare. But Mr. Clancy was always modest about his possessions. ‘It’s so sweet of you to like my things,’ he would say deprecatingly to some fashionable lady who was going round his rooms sniffing up ideas. ‘I never care for anything I have. It’s so good of you to like my poor little cottage.