"Now that Maud's through with the novelty of refitting her room, though I saw nothing wrong with it before, she's gone back into complaining discontent again. What's the matter with you all, Selina?"
"I'm wondering myself, Mrs. Addison," said Selina truthfully.
She went on up. Maud was clearing the litter from a big deal table that certainly did not add anything to the looks of her room with its new blue carpet and blue paper and ruffled curtains and its still a-wee-bit-envied cottage furniture. Maud was going in for china painting right now and kept her equipment on the deal table. She exhibited the pitcher of a tea-set of three pieces.
"Maud was going in for china painting."
"There's nothing to it, Selina; painting pink butterflies on a blue background doesn't satisfy one bit. In my heart, and you know it and I know it, too, I don't care a rap for decorated china tea-sets."
It was Maud's third essay into the arts since leaving school eighteen months ago. She had tried with two successive teachers to manufacture a voice which was not there, and also had taken a course in Kensington embroidery. A cover of blue felt cloth, done in drab cat-tails was on her reading-table now.
"I've just been over with Juliette," Selina explained.
"At least she knows what she does want, and that's a good deal," from Maud.
"She hates the bisque cupid as much as we do," Selina hastened to relate, "and hasn't said so. It's taken this last to make her disloyal."