“Your ceiling is very low, isn’t it?—still, for a cottage, it isn’t a bad-sized room; and I see you’ve made the best of it with your little bits of things put about.” I do wish you could have heard the charming, indulgent condescension with which she said “your little bits of things”! “Though I don’t think I’ve ever seen yellow walls before—very _quaint_, of course, but—er—rather peculiar. Don’t you think so, dear?”
Dear said she did. But I don’t know why, seeing that she was carrying about more yellow on her mustard person than I had in the whole of the house!
“I _wish_ you could see our _lovely_ dining-room at home,” the plaid continued. I murmured inarticulations, as there was a pause where I was evidently intended to say something. “It has a dark red paper on the wall. We have just furnished it with fumed oak. I think fumed oak is _so_ artistic. We have a most _handsome_ sideboard that will only just stand across one end of the room. I don’t mind telling you that it cost fifty pounds originally, but as the people to whom it belonged were a little unfortunate, we got it—well, we didn’t give quite that much for it; but you’d never know. It was just as good as new. And we have aspidistras and a _beautiful_ palm in copper flower-pots—really exquisite works of art they are; and they go so well with the fumed oak, don’t they, dear?”
By the time I had been taken over their _beautiful_ drawing-room, we had finished tea—happily, for I already saw a _beautiful_ best bedroom suite looming ahead.
Having made a most excellent, not to say solid, meal, the voluble one shoved her chair back and said—
“I feel all the better for that cup of tea. Now, I think, if you’ll show us the way, we’ll go upstairs and have a good wash, and make ourselves presentable—not that you dress much for dinner, I suppose?”
I conclude I, too, was all the better for my cup of tea, for I felt myself warming to the work—and I led the way washstandwards most cordially. I didn’t take them out into the hall to the more modern staircase, I opened the door in the corner of the room, and revealed the steep stone stairs; and you should have heard their gurgles and squeals.
“Oh, dearest, _do_ look. _Isn’t_ it primitive? And do you go up and down this every day?”