The cottage at Wimbledon was no longer a dream. It was a pleasant
reality, the pride and delight of Mrs. Sheldon and Ann Woolper. It was a
picturesque dwelling-place, half cottage, half villa, situated on the
broad high-road from London to Kingston, with all the woodland of
Richmond Park to be seen from the windows at the back. Only a wall
divided Mr. Hawkehurst's gardens from the coverts of the Queen. It was
like a royal demesne, Charlotte said; whereupon her husband insisted that
it should be christened by the name of a royal dwelling, and so called it
Charlottenburgh.
Mr. Hawkehurst had secured this delightful abode for a considerable term
of years, and upon the furnishing and decoration of the pretty rustic
rooms Charlotte and he lavished unmeasured care. The delicious excitement
of "picking up," or, in more elegant parlance, "collecting," was to these
two happy people an inexhaustible source of pleasure. Every eccentric
little table, every luxurious chair, had its special history, and had
been the subject of negotiation and diplomacy that might have sufficed a
Burleigh in the reorganization of Western Europe. The little Dresden and
Vienna cups and saucers in the maple cabinet had been every one bought
from a different dealer. The figures on the mantelpiece were Old Chelsea,
of a quality that would have excited the envy of a Bernal or a Bonn, and
had only fallen to the proud possessors by a sequence of fortuitous
circumstances, the history of which was almost as thrilling as the
story of Boehmer's diamond-necklace.
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