One trusts to chance to
fill up the table, and one never finds any difficulty about it. It
is lucky I got up a regular stock of china, and so on, in anticipation
of your coming. Of course, as a bachelor, I have not been a dinner
giver, except on occasions like this, when nobody expects anything
like state, and things are conducted to a certain extent in picnic
fashion. I have paid off my dinner obligations by having men to mess
or the club. However, I will consult Rumzan, and we will have a
regular parade of our materials, and you shall inspect our resources.
If there is anything in the way of flower vases or center dishes,
or anything of that sort, you think requisite, we must get them.
Jestonjee has got a good stock of all that sort of thing. As to
tablecloths and napkins and so on, I had a supply with the china,
so you will find that all right. Of course you will get plenty of
flowers; they are the principal things, after all, towards making
the table look well. You have had no experience in arranging them,
I suppose?"
"None at all, uncle; I never arranged a vase of flowers in my life."
"Then I tell you what you had better do, Isobel. You coax the Doctor
into coming in and undertaking it. He is famous in that way. He
always has the decoration of the mess table on grand occasions;
and when we give a dance the flowers and decorations are left to
him as a matter of course."
"I will ask him, uncle; but he is the last man in the world I should
have thought of in connection with flowers and decorations.
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