the building already covered nine acres

He would have liked to have ended with a flourish to the effect that he would follow in their footsteps and add another stone to their building. Since, however, the building already covered nine acres, to add even a single stone seemed superfluous. Could one mention furniture in a peroration? Could one speak of chairs and tables and mats to lie beside people’s beds? For whatever the peroration wanted, that was what the house stood in need of. Leaving his speech unfinished for the moment, he strode down hill again resolved henceforward to devote himself to the furnishing of the mansion. The news — that she was to attend him instantly — brought tears to the eyes of good old Mrs Grimsditch, now grown somewhat old. Together they perambulated the house. The towel horse in the King’s bedroom (’and that was King Jamie, my Lord,’ she said, hinting that it was many a day since a King had slept under their roof; but the odious Parliament days were over and there was now a Crown in England again) lacked a leg; there were no stands to the ewers in the little closet leading into the waiting room of the Duchess’s page; Mr Greene had made a stain on the carpet with his nasty pipe smoking, which she and Judy, for all their scrubbing, had never been able to wash out. Indeed, when Orlando came to reckon up the matter of furnishing with rosewood chairs and cedar-wood cabinets, with silver basins, china bowls, and Persian carpets, every one of the three hundred and sixty-five bedrooms which the house contained, he saw that it would be no light one; and if some thousands of pounds of his estate remained over, these would do little more than hang a few galleries with tapestry, set the dining hall with fine, carved chairs and provide mirrors of solid silver and chairs of the same metal (for which he had an inordinate passion) for the furnishing of the royal bedchambers. He now set to work in earnest, as we can prove beyond a doubt if we look at his ledgers. Let us glance at an inventory of what he bought at this time, with the expenses totted up in the margin — but these we omit. ‘To fifty pairs of Spanish blankets, ditto curtains of crimson and white taffeta; the valence to them of white satin embroidered with crimson and white silk... ‘To seventy yellow satin chairs and sixty stools, suitable with their buckram covers to them all... ‘To sixty seven walnut tree tables... ‘To seventeen dozen boxes containing each dozen five dozen of Venice glasses... ‘To one hundred and two mats, each thirty yards long... ‘To ninety seven cushions of crimson damask laid with silver parchment lace and footstools of cloth of tissue and chairs suitable... ‘To fifty branches for a dozen lights apiece...’