Doomsday by Warwick Deeping

At "Doomsday" Arnold Furze had been preparing for a tea-party. Mrs. Sarah, chartered for an extra morning, had scrubbed the tiled floor of the living-room, and the brick floor of the kitchen, and poked her nose into all sorts of matters that did not concern her. Furze had locked up the pink lustre tea-service in a cupboard, and that locked cupboard had tantalized the lady through the whole of the morning. Now--what--had he got in there? The sugar and the tea no doubt, and his tobacco tin? Mrs. Sarah could not abide a suspicious temperament.

But the labour of love was the man's. With oil and beeswax and two old socks he polished the oak table and the chest, and having brought a length of flowery cretonne at Carslake he ingeniously fashioned a sort of apron for the lounge sofa. It was stitched at the back and tucked in round the cushioning, much to the interest of the dog who attempted to lie on it, but was removed gently yet with a firmness that he understood. Furze brought in flowers. An old red bread-pan he filled with foxgloves and stood it in a corner, and on the oak table were crimson stocks in a blue bowl. A cream-pan on the oak chest held a mass of red and white may, and the scent of it was a sweet and heavy fragrance in the room. Mrs. Damaris' parlour had a sheaf of yellow flags from Rushy Pool. As for the sunk garden, the Canterbury bells and the sweet williams and the stocks were in early blossom; the grass had been scythed and the beds weeded.