We had a good dining-room—large, with white trimmings—and some carpets that cost as much as two thousand dollars each, and chairs that matched the table, and plenty of pictures.
I been around now a lot among our best people and I notice that unless you've got some pictures of sheep in your house you're no good. Any artist just natural has to paint sheep; yet that's the meanest anermal there is, and I don't see why a cowman especial should have sheep in his house. But we done so because it was correct—though I've never et sheep meat. Also, a couple of gondolas, by some Italian, near the sheep.
Besides them, if you've got a good house you've got to have one picture about twilight on a lake, with a broken tree on it and some weeds, and a crane standing there like it didn't have no friends. We had one of them crane pictures too.
When Old Lady Kimberly seen we had sheep and gondolas and weeds and cranes in our house, same as anybody else, she seemed to feel more comfortable. I told Katherine some of those things I'd found out about art and she come near choking in her soup, and said I was awful funny, though I was serious.
"Everything you've got," says she, "is perfectly lovely."
"She done it," says I, which was true. The old man and me, if we was left alone, would never of had even a picture of sheep in the whole house.
Like enough you've been at dinners in cities where they don't have everything on the table in big dishes, like at a ranch, but a little at a time; so you've got to guess frequent whether you're going to get enough to eat out of things that's coming on later. We was pretty well trained, Old Man Wright and me, since we come to our new house, for Bonnie Bell and William and all the rest run a regular city system on us.
Bonnie Bell was easy as Mrs. Kimberly would of been at her house. She didn't have to say a word to William; he shore was some butler—I reckon he buttled as good as anyone in the Row. I reckon he was born a orphan, he looked so sad.
We had some soup made out of turtle, which is better'n you'd think, to look at a turtle. Afterward was fish I couldn't name. Then there was ducks and potatoes, cooked together so you couldn't tell 'em apart, and considerable other birds with things put on; and alfalfa, with kerosene on it, maybe. After a while comes soft cheese, with strawberries, and yet softer cheese, with little onions cut in it, if you liked that better—I can't remember all them things now or how they come, but we was a couple of hours there and got considerable to eat before we quit. Also, Old Man Kimberly got plenty to drink. He says to the boss:
"You'll excuse me, Colonel," says he, "but I can't help saying a word in favor of your choice in wines."