“You are welcome to read and think, provided it is nothing more recent than St. Chrysostom.”
“So here is the letter to Alda,” giving it to her open.
“Short and to the purpose,” she said.
“Alda submits to the inevitable,” he said. “Don’t appear as if she had a choice.”
“Only mention the alleviations. No, you are not to get up yet. There’s no place for you to sit in, and the east wind is not greatly mitigated by the sea air. Shall I send Anna to read to you?”
“In half-an-hour, if she is ready then; meantime, those two books, if you please.”
She handed him his Greek Testament and Bishop Andrews, and repaired to the drawing-room, where she found Anna exulting in the decorations brought from home, and the flowers brought in from an itinerant barrow.
“I have been setting down what they must send us from home—your own chair and table, and the Liberty rugs, and the casts of St. Cecilia and little St. Cyrillus for those bare corners, and I am going out for a terra-cotta vase.”
“Oh, my dear, the room is charming; but don’t let us get too dependent on pretty things. They demoralize as much or more than ugly ones.”
“Do you mean that they are a luxury? Is it not right to try to have everything beautiful?”