Doomsday by Warwick Deeping

At Great Park Farm, Melhurst, country carts, cars, Fords, and a light lorry or two were parked in the paddock, while their owners went in search of bargains; and Furze, who had kept his greys under the shade of a big chestnut tree and in the charge of a friendly carter, wandered about catalogue in hand. Great Park spread itself in the arms of a pleasant and untidy old garden full of monkshood and lilac and guelder rose, and since the weather was fair much of the gear to be sold had been laid out in the garden.

Furze, pencil in hand, marked the lots upon the catalogue for which he wished to bid. Harnett the auctioneer had gathered in extraneous material, and it was a composite sale, and Great Park sheltered for the day much furniture that was strange to it. In the farm-house parlour, with its wallpaper of red roses and blue garlands, Furze found a massive old oak table with chamfered rails and square legs, black-brown with age, put together by some village carpenter a hundred and fifty years ago. On the table was laid out a pink lustre tea-service, six cups and saucers, teapot, sugar bowl and milk jug, and Furze, the lover, saw Mary's hands fluttering over the old china. He marked down the table, Lot 33, also the pink lustre tea-service, Lot 67. Wandering about the house with a crowd of farmers' wives and Melhurst women, and bargain hunters and snatchers up of the antique and the curious, he found many pieces fit for "Doomsday." His pencil left marks against an oak bureau, a mahogany chest of drawers, three old Windsor chairs, a bedstead, an oak chest, a long mirror in a faded gilt frame, a length of green cord stair carpet, a kitchen table, a deal cupboard, a set of knives, a willow pattern dinner service, a Chesterfield sofa that would need recovering. He jotted down against each item the amount that he could afford to bid for it. Particularly did he covet the old oak table and the pink lustre tea-service.