The season at Pau was approaching the end of its course. Already villas and flats and servants were being engaged for the winter to come. We had been asked definitely whether we proposed to return and, if so, whether we wished again to occupy the excellent villa we had. Not knowing what answer to make to the first question, we had passed to the second—somewhat illogically. The second had proved more heatedly disputable than the first. Finally Jill had looked up from a letter to Piers and put in her oar with a splash.
"The villa's all right," she announced. "Everyone says it's the best, and so should we, if we didn't live in it. It's what's inside that's so awful. Even one decent sofa would make all the difference."
In silence we pondered her words.
At length—
"I confess," said Berry, "that the idea of having a few chairs about in which you can sit continuously for ten minutes, not so much in comfort as without fear of contracting a bed-sore or necrosis of the coccyx, appeals to me. Compared with most of the 'sitzplatz' in this here villa, an ordinary church pew is almost voluptuous. The beastly things seem designed to promote myalgia."
"Yet they do know," said I. "The French, I mean. Look at their beds."
"Exactly," replied my brother-in-law. "That's the maddening part of it. Every French bed is an idyll—a poem of repose. The upholsterer puts his soul into its creation. A born genius, he expresses himself in beds. The rest of the junk he turns out…" He broke off and glanced about the room. His eye lighted upon a couch, lozenge-shaped, hog-backed, featuring the Greek-Key pattern in brown upon a brick-red ground and surrounded on three sides by a white balustrade some three inches high. "Just consider that throne. Does it or does it not suggest collusion between a private-school workshop, a bricklayer's labourer, and the Berlin branch of the Y.W.C.A.?"
"If," said Daphne, "it was only the chairs, I wouldn't mind. But it's everything. The sideboard, for instance——"
"Ah," said her husband, "my favourite piece. The idea of a double cabin-washstand is very beautifully carried out. I'm always expecting Falcon to press something and a couple of basins to appear. Then we can wash directly after the asparagus."
"The truth is," said Adèle, "these villas are furnished to be let. And when you've said that, you've said everything."