The new house was of rough-hewn red sandstone, combining solid dignity and some artistic merit, for Benham had not stood still architecturally speaking. The River Drive was a grotesque, yet on the whole encouraging exhibit. Most of the residences had been designed by native talent, but under the spur of experiment even the plain, hard-headed builders had been constrained to dub themselves "architects," and adopt modern methods; and here and there stood evidences that the seed planted by Mrs. Hallett Taylor and Littleton had borne fruit, for Benham possessed at least half a dozen private houses which could defy criticism.
The one selected by Mr. Parsons was not of these half dozen; but the plain, hard-headed builder who had erected it for the original owner was shrewd and imitative, and had avoided ambitious deviations from the type he wished to copy--the red sandstone, swell front variety, which ten years before would have seemed to the moral sense of Benham unduly cheerful. Mr. Parsons was so fortunate as to be able to buy it just after it had been completed, together with a stable and half an acre of ground, from one of the few Benhamites whose financial ventures had ended in disaster, and who was obliged to sell. It was a more ambitious residence than Mr. Parsons had desired, but it was the most available, inasmuch as he could occupy it at once. It had been painted and decorated within, but was unfurnished. Mr. Parsons, as a practical business man, engaged the builder to select and supply the bedroom and solid fittings, but it occurred to him to invite Selma to choose the furnishings for what he called the show rooms.
Selma was delighted to visit once more the New York stores, free from the bridle of Wilbur's criticism and unrestrained by economy. She found to her satisfaction that the internal decoration of the new house was not unlike that of the Williamses' first habitation--that is, gay and bedizened; and she was resolved in the selection of her draperies and ornaments to buy things which suggested by their looks that they were handsome, and whose claim to distinction was not mere sober unobtrusiveness. She realized that some of her purchases would have made Wilbur squirm, but since his death she felt more sure than ever that even where art was concerned his taste was subdued, timid, and unimaginative. For instance, she believed that he would not have approved her choice of light-blue satin for the upholstery of the drawing-room, nor of a marble statue--an allegorical figure of Truth, duly draped, as its most conspicuous ornament.