Staines

“ It's a fact that I never feel so safe as I do when I've got that dog here. Don't you believe in it yourself, sir?"
"Sometimes I do—Mrs Staines does absolutely. If there's nothing in it, then there has been the most extraordinary lot of coincidences I ever came across."
Richard Staines and his wife had agreed that they would live principally in the country, and one day during their engagement Jane took Richard down to Selsdon Bois to show him the house of her dreams, known to the Post Office as Midway. Then, when he came to select, he would know the kind of thing to look for. ”

“ Staines."
"All in due time, Lady Dove," was Mr. Staines' guarded answer.
"Really how horribly Grossman has arranged these flowers, and taken all my best roses too," exclaimed her ladyship. "You were much more successful, Anne Faber. It seems a pity you can no longer use your talents."
"My husband is passionately fond of flowers, we always have some on the table," murmured Mrs. Faber.
"Indeed! It's a pity flowers are not edible. Mr. Staines, how is Captain Stone. He is another eccentric creature, and has not been to see us for a long time, but he asked for a bed to-morrow." ”

“ When Winn returned from Davos, Lady Staines decided upon a garden party.
"Good God!" cried Sir Peter. "Do you mean to tell me I've wasted that three hundred pounds, Sarah?" Sir Peter preferred this form of the question to "Is my boy going to die?" He meant precisely the same thing.
"As far as I know," Lady Staines replied, "nobody ever dies before causing trouble; they die after it, and add their funeral expenses to the other inconveniences they have previously arranged for. Can't you see the boy's marriage has gone to pot?" ”

“ Staines saw clearly that it was Lady Dove who had swallowed the pill, and replied politely,
"I know that the General asked his brother's consent, and Captain Stone thought all his brother did perfect."
"Indeed! men are so deluded, I mean the old ones of course. Lewis Waycott, our neighbour, is fast turning into the same kind of man. He has become quite the farmer, don't you think so, Evas?" ”

“ Rosa Staines was wiser about her husband than she had been, but she had plenty to learn.
Lord Tadcaster anchored off Gravesend, and visited Mrs. Staines nearly every day. She received him with a pleasure that was not at all lively, but quite undisguised. ”

“ Staines live with Uncle Philip. The insurance money is returned, but the diamond money makes them very easy. Staines follows his profession now under great advantages: a noble house, rent free; the curiosity that attaches to a man who has been canted out of a ship in mid-ocean, and lives to tell it; and then Lord Tadcaster, married into another noble house, swears by him, and talks of him; so does Lady Cicely Munster, late Treherne; and when such friends as these are warm, it makes a physician the centre of an important clientele ”

“ Tester, "and a young lady. They gave Mr. Staines's name, and asked to be showed round, and," he added, "I showed 'em round."
"Well, what happened?" asked Staines.
"Well," said the man, "I took 'em in the factory, in the big building, and then this young fellow asked to see the place where the metal was kept."
"What metal?" asked three voices at one and the same time.
"That's what I asked," said Mr. Tester, with satisfaction. "I told 'em Stivvins dealt with all kinds of metal, so the gent says: 'What about gold?'"
"What about gold?" repeated Mr. Staines thoughtfully. ”

“ Staines, I will not beat about the bush with you. My judgment is still against this marriage; you need not look so alarmed; it does not follow I shall forbid it. I feel I have hardly a right to, for my Rosa might be in her grave now but for you; and, another thing, when I interfered between you two I had no proof you were a man of ability; I had only your sweetheart's word for that; and I never knew a case before where a young lady's swan did not turn out a goose. Your rare ability gives you another chance in the professional battle that is before you ”

“ At last the skin was off, and the Hottentot said, “Me take this to my kraal, and dey all say, 'Squat a great shooter; kill um lion.'”
Then Staines saw another chance for him, and summoned all his address for a last effort. “No, Squat,” said he, “that skin belongs to me. I shot the lion, with the only rifle that can kill a lion like a cat. Yet you would not give me a diamond—a paltry stone for it. No, Squat, if you were to go into your village with that lion's skin, why the old men would bend their heads to you, and say, 'Great is Squat! ”

“ Smith, whom we shall hereafter call John Adams, assured Sir Thomas Staines, that, since Mr. Fletcher Christian’s death, there had not been a single instance of infidelity in the married women, nor of doubtful chastity in the others, and that he was equally ignorant of any attempt at seduction on the part of the males. They were all made to labour while young in the cultivation of the ground ”

“ But through the air there runs a thrill of coming stir. King John has slept at Duncroft Hall, and all the day before the little town of Staines has echoed to the clang of armed men, and the clatter of great horses over its rough stones, and the shouts of captains, and the grim oaths and surly jests of bearded bowmen, billmen, pikemen, and strange-speaking foreign spearmen. ”

“ Harold Staines was a finished gentleman, as we used to say in those days, and I admired him the more that I still had ringing in my ears that eternal refrain of my schoolroom days—"My child, my child, when will you ever learn to be a lady?" He seemed to me an embodiment of the serene amenities of life, and I didn't know how very great a personage I thought him until I once overheard a young man in a crowd at St Peter's call him that confounded prig. ”

“ No wonder the atmosphere was foetid.
I was about to leave the room, glad to get out of it, when I noticed in a corner of the ceiling a dark, yellow-brown stain, about a yard in circumference. This struck me as curious, and I went over and stood under it, and gazed up at it, endeavouring to discover its origin. Then I saw that it was moist. I pulled up one of the blinds in order to see better, but my scrutiny failed to give me any inkling as to the origin of the stain. ”

“ A decorator if asked to imitate in stain on white wood a piece of parquetry or inlaid wood, might reply that such a thing was impossible, alleging as a reason that by employing liquid stain in the same way as a distemper—that is to say, by the aid of a stencil to reproduce the pattern—the stain, as soon as it became absorbed would be found to “run,” and so giving to the pattern imitated an indistinct or blurred edge. ”

“ We have now dealt with the main materials: the glass, the leads, the stain and the paint, and I think I have said all that is necessary about the materials themselves. Once you know your materials, the production of a stained glass window is essentially and properly a piece of communal work. I do not a bit sympathise with those people who say they do the whole thing themselves. Why should a man who is capable of designing a thing well be a plumber and glazier; he ought not to. It is like the people who insist on building their own houses, the sort of people who wear sandals and live on nuts. ”

“ I see now quite constantly in a workshop in Scotland my first stained glass efforts; they are a very valuable lesson in modesty—they are quite absurd. They turned out well enough because the fellows in the workshop knew their job; they did it, and talked to me, and I had the sense to see they knew the work better than I did, and we got the work out pretty well in the end. You people here with a useful craft shop, with all the materials to hand, have a tremendous advantage over us older people who just had to find out the best way we could. ”

“ Wine stains, fruit stains, beer stains, water stains, paint stains, pitch stains, any stains—all come out at one rub with the infallible and invaluable composition. If a lady stains her honour, she has only need to swallow one cake and she’s cured at once—for it’s poison. If a [204] gentleman wants to prove his, he has only need to bolt one little square, and he has put it beyond question—for it’s quite as satisfactory as a pistol-bullet, and a great deal nastier in the flavour, consequently the more credit in taking it. ”

“ A Perfect Stain.—A perfect stain, if it could be obtained, would be a clear, limpid liquid, free from all solid particles or specks of colouring matter that might clog the pores of the wood and interfere with the absorption of the filler—so clear and transparent that it would in no way obscure the grain of the wood, which in many varieties is the chief element of beauty—so limpid that it would easily soak deep into the pores of the wood, carrying to a considerable depth below the surface an artificial colour which will not fade on exposure. ”

“ Sometimes one is stained with dirt or with color, and not only does the stain run on further than the spot of contact, but it discolors other of the threads. And remember that the threads are living—are like electric wires, more, are like quivering nerves. How far, then, must the stain, the drag awry, be communicated! But eventually the long strands, the living threads which in their unbroken continuity form the individual, pass out of the shadow into the shine. ”

“ If it is scratched and spotted it can be scrubbed clean and given a new coat of Jackson’s varnish stain and be in a moment as good as new if not better. Just one word en parenthése, as it were, about stains. Do not let anything anyone can say induce you to attempt the beautiful green staining we all so much admire at home, for if you do, it can be nothing but a most ghastly failure. True, the particular piece of furniture will be green, but such a green! ”

“ The Stain in weathering does not become shabby like paint; but the surfaces assume weather beaten grays, very soft and harmonious, and varying slightly according to the original hue. The Stain may be renewed at any time with little trouble or expense, as the natural hues which nature gives in combination with the stain are allowed to stay. ”

“ Detached figures may be arranged in the order of any satin, but the regular satins show the figures too much in lines, and the system is not much practised on that account. Irregular satins give much better effects. Fig. 376 is a design consisting of six spots arranged in six-end satin order, on thirty ends and thirty picks; the ground being five-end satin. In making the design the space to be covered is divided into six parts, both in warp and weft, by the crosses at the corners of the squares. ”

“ Stagnare occurs often for tinning, as stagnator does for a tin-founder. In the thirteenth century, Henry III. of England gave as a present a stagnarium or a stannaria, a tin mine or tin work, or as others say, fodina stanni. In the fourteenth century, there was in England, under Edward III., a stannaria curia; and in the same century, besides various other ornaments, lunulæ stanneatæ were forbidden to the clergy. In a catalogue of the year 1379, the following articles occur: “tria parva stanna modici valoris ... item unum stannum parvum ... ”

“ In oil staining ordinary house woodwork and cheap panellings, apply the size before the stain. When the former is dry, it will be found that the oil stain, which now is graining color, also can be spread much better and more regularly, and that those sappy places which would otherwise have absorbed much stain are scarcely noticeable. In sizing white or stained wood, poor work often results from the quirks and mitres of mouldings receiving too much of the froth of the warm size. ”

“ Stain is, however, used of giving an intended and perhaps pleasing color to wood, glass, etc., by an application of coloring-matter which enters the substance a little below the surface, in distinction from painting, in which coloring-matter is spread upon the surface; dyeing is generally said of wool, yarn, cloth, or similar materials which are dipped into the coloring liquid. Figuratively, a standard or a garment may be dyed with blood in honorable warfare; an assassin's weapon is stained with the blood of his victim. ”

“ Common Satin is what is technically known as an eight-leaf twill, the order in which the filling thread rises being once in eight times. The filling in the better qualities of Satin is of silk, whilst in the lower grades of this fabric cotton is generally used for the filling. Rich Satins may be woven on almost any number from five to twenty leaf twills. Satin at the time of leaving the loom has a somewhat flossy and rough surface—this is removed by passing the fabric over heated metal cylinders, which destroy the minute fibrous ends and increase the brilliance of the silk. ”

“ Nor is it advisable for the instructor himself to mix his own finishing materials. Even the most expert woodfinishers find it taxing their ability to mix a fresh lot of stain that will exactly match that of a previous lot. There is nearly always some boy, or boys, with pieces but partly covered when the stain in any given lot is exhausted. The best way, everything considered, is to make use of some standard color of finish in stain and filler. ”

“ If all the work is to be left dull, give the frame or bracket, &c., a coat of Oak Spirit Stain, which dries in dull if put upon new wood, not prepared in any manner. To prepare wooden frames, &c., so that the Oak Spirit Stain shall assume a polished surface, it is necessary to size the frame well and leave it to dry; when dry, give it one or more coats of Oak Spirit Stain. ”