“Yes; we shall get very pretty ones for thirty-seven cents a roll; all you want of a paper, you know, is to make a ground-tint to throw out your pictures and other matters, and to reflect a pleasant tone of light.”
“Well, John, you know Uncle James says that a stone color is the best, but I can’t bear those cold blue grays.”
“Nor I,” says John. “If we must have gray, let it at least be a gray suffused with gold or rose color, such as you see at evening in the clouds.”
“So I think,” responds she; “but, better, I should like a paper with a tone of buff,—something that produces warm yellowish reflections, and will almost make you think the sun is shining in cold gray weather; and then there is nothing that lights up so cheerfully in the evening. In short, John, I think the color of a zafferano rose will be just about the shade we want.”
“Well, I can find that, in good American paper, as I said before, at from thirty-seven to forty cents a roll. Then our bordering: there’s an important question, for that must determine the carpet, the chairs, and everything else. Now what shall be the ground-tint of our rooms?”
“There are only two to choose between,” says the lady,—“green and maroon: which is the best for the picture?”
“I think,” says John, looking above the mantelpiece, as if he saw a picture there,—“I think a border of maroon velvet, with maroon furniture, is the best for the picture.”
“I think so, too,” said she; “and then we will have that lovely maroon and crimson carpet that I saw at Lowe’s; it is an ingrain, to be sure, but has a Brussels pattern, a mossy, mixed figure, of different shades of crimson; it has a good warm, strong color, and when I come to cover the lounges and our two old armchairs with maroon rep, it will make such a pretty effect.”
“Yes,” said John; “and then, you know, our picture is so bright, it will light up the whole. Everything depends on the picture.”