“Do you really think so? I’m so glad. I went over to Seagate the other day and got some cretonne for the curtains and the easy-chair. The old chintz there was in the room would have given you the nightmare.”
Mabin had not recovered from her first impression of astonishment and admiration. The dingy dining-room, with its mahogany and horsehair, had not prepared her for this. A beautiful rug lay in front of the fireplace, which was filled with a fresh green fern.
“This will be put in the corridor outside at night,” Mrs. Dale was careful to explain.
The hangings of the little brass bedstead were of cretonne with a pattern of gray-green birds and white flowers on a pale pink ground: these hangings were trimmed with lace of a deep cream tint. The rest of the furniture was enamelled white, with the exception of a dainty Japanese writing-table in one window, and a low wicker arm-chair in another.
But it was not so much in these things as in the care and taste with which all the accessories had been chosen, the silver candlesticks and tray on the dressing-table, the little Sèvres suit on the mantelpiece, that a lavish and luxurious hand was betrayed. Mabin’s delighted admiration made Mrs. Dale smile, and then suddenly burst into tears.
“Don’t look at me, don’t trouble your head about me, child,” she cried, as she turned away her head to wipe her eyes. “It was my vanity, the vanity I can’t get rid of, that made me want to show you I know how to make things pretty and nice. I made the excuse to myself that it was to please you, but really I know it was to please myself!”
“But why shouldn’t you please yourself and have pretty things about you?” asked Mabin in surprise. “Is there any harm in having nice things, if one has the money to buy them and the taste to choose them? I suppose it helps to keep the people that make them.”
“That is what I used to say to myself, dear,” said Mrs. Dale with a sigh. “But now I don’t buy pretty things any more—for—for a reason.” And again a look of deep pain swept across her face. But at Mabin’s interested look she shook her head. “No, no,” she added, in a frightened whisper, “I wouldn’t tell you why for all the world!”
“But you wear pretty clothes! Or is it only that you look so pretty in them?” suggested Mabin, blushing with the fear that she was blundering again.
Mrs. Dale shook her head smiling slightly: “I have my frocks made to fit me, that’s all,” she said simply. “And as for these,” she touched the flashing rings on her fingers, “I wear them because I’m obliged to.”