He told her that he did not care to live in a Rink, but what he said cut very few Lemons with the Side-Partner. She was looking at the half-tone Pictures of up-to-date Homes and beginning to realize that the Wall-Paper, Steel Engravings and the Enlarged Photographs of Yap Relatives would have to go.
One Day when the Provider struck the Premises he found the Workmen putting Red Burlap on the Walls of the Sitting-Room.
"Why the Gunny-Sack?" he asked. "Can't we afford Wall-Paper?"
"Love of Art is the True Essence of the Higher Life," said the Æsthete, and she began to read a Booklet bound in the same Paper that the Butcher uses when he wraps up a Soup Bone.
"Come again," said the Wage Earner, who was slow at catching these Ruskin Twisters.
"This is Art Burlap and not the kind that they use for sacking Peanuts," explained the Disciple of Beauty. "Above the Burlap will be a Shelf of Weathered Oak, and then above that a Frieze of Blue Jimson Flowers. Then when we draw all of the Curtains and light one Candle in here it will make a Swell Effect."
"I feel that we are going to be very Happy," he said, and then he went out and sat behind the Barn, where he could smoke his Pipe and meditate on the Uncertainties of Life.