The Opinions of a Philosopher | Page 9

about the
wine-cellar. My only revenge, a miserable one forsooth, was that she
resembled a skeleton three months later; a pale, pitiful bag of bones,
though proud and radiant withal. Had it not been for that prediction that
her life was to be lengthened, I should have felt anxious. What a
marvellous creation a woman is, to be sure! Man and philosopher as I
am, my impulse would have been to consign the contents of the garret
to the auctioneer or the ash-man, and to retain most of the least-used
furniture and upholstery to eke out our new splendor. But Josephine's
method was distinctly opposite. She was critical of nearly everything
respectable-looking in the old house; on the other hand, there was
scarcely anything in the attic or lumber-room, where our useless things
were stored, which did not turn out to be a treasure and just the thing
for the new establishment. To begin with, there was a love of a set of
andirons and a brass fender (to reproduce Josephine's description
exactly), which had been discarded at the time we began housekeeping
as too old-fashioned and peculiar. Of equal import was a
disreputable-looking mahogany desk with brass handles and claw feet

which had belonged to my great-grandmother before it was banished to
the garret within a month after our wedding ceremony, on the plea that
none of the drawers would work. They don't still, for that matter. A
cumbersome, stately Dutch clock and a toast-rack of what Josephine
styled medieval pattern, were among the other discoveries. The latter
was reposing in a soap-box in company with a battered, vulgar
nutmeg-grater. But the pieces of resistance, as I called them, on account
of the difficulty we had in moving them from behind a pile of old
window-blinds, were the portraits of a little gentleman in small-clothes,
with his hair in a cue and a seeming cast in one eye, and a stout lady
with a high complexion and corkscrew ringlets.
"Oh, Fred, who are they?" cried Josephine, ecstatically, and she began
to dust the seedy, frameless canvases with a reverential air. "Where did
they come from?"
"They're ancestors of mine, love."
"Ancestors? How lovely, Fred! I didn't know you had any. I mean I
didn't know you had any who had their portraits painted."
"On the contrary, Josephine, I told you who they were when we were
engaged, and I remember I was rather anxious to hang them in the
dining-room, but you said they were a pair of old frumps, and that you
wouldn't give them house space. So we compromised on the attic."
"Did I?" said my darling, gravely. "Well it must have been because the
dining-room was too small for them. They will look delightfully in our
new one, when they are mounted and touched up a bit, and they will set
off our Copley of my great-aunt in the turban. What are their names?
They must have names."
"They are my great-grandfather Plunkett and his wife, on my father's
side. He was a common hangman."
"Now don't be idiotic, Fred."
"He was, my dear. It was you yourself who said it. Don't you remember

my calling two of your forbears a precious pair of donkeys because
they wouldn't eat any form of shell-fish, and your replying that, though
I was in the habit of grandiloquently describing my ancestor who used
to execute people as 'the sheriff of the county,' he was only a common
hangman?"
"Oh, was that the man? All I said was that if he had been my ancestor
instead of yours, you would have called him a hangman. He was sheriff
of the county, wasn't he, dear?"
"So I have been taught to believe."
"'My ancestor, the high sheriff,' won't sound badly at all," she said,
jauntily.
"Especially if we can tone up the old gentleman's game eye a little."
Josephine's face expressed open admiration. "You are a genius and a
duck," she exclaimed; then, after a reflective pause, she murmured,
"Very likely he met with an accident just before he was painted."
"Yes, dear. Consequently, if the eye can't be improved by means of the
best modern artistic talent, the least we can do is to put a shade over it."
This waggish remark seemed to be lost on Josephine. She wore a
far-away look as though her thoughts were following some fancy which
had appealed to her. She did not deign to take me into her confidence at
the moment, but a fortnight later I happened to come upon her in close
confabulation with a very clever, rising, local artist, over this same
portrait of my great-grandfather Plunkett.
"Fred," she said, nonchalantly, "Mr. Binkey thinks he can do something
to this which will improve it."
"I shouldn't suppose that it was easy to