The top is made of sacking, and takes four yards at about 1s. a yard; the front is made from a deep frill of cretonne lined with unbleached calico, and is sewn on rings (fig. 12). These are suspended on nails, and the whole of the top is cushioned with cretonne, cretonne cushions being sewn on rings and hung on the wall to make a back for these seats. The description of arrangement of curtains suitable for this will be found in the chapter on curtains; and I maintain that no girl or woman either need consider it a hardship if she have to spend her morning sewing or reading here, while she could write her necessary letters at the desk prepared for her husband, and which is a necessity in any house for a man who has accounts to keep and letters to write. Still, if Edwin is not a very much better specimen of a husband than the ordinary smoker of the period makes, Angelina will have to sit in her third room sometimes, for there is nothing more trying than an atmosphere of stale smoke, and I look forward to a time when men of the rising generation will be a little less selfish than they are at present in their indulgence in a habit that, so far as I can perceive, has not one merit to recommend it.
How often am I asked by girls how they can get rid of the disagreeable effects of smoke after dinner! They say—and very rightly too—that they really dread breakfast-time, and that their morning is poisoned for them by the indescribable odour that greets them when they come down refreshed from their night’s rest to take up their day’s work cheerfully; that it would be worse if Edwin smoked in the drawing-room, and they have no small room where they could allow him and his friends to work their wicked will, and that therefore they feel hopeless. And I cannot keep from wondering why men should smoke as they do; and thinking over this, and remembering how terrible it has been to me to come down to stale smoke, I should like to beg Edwin seriously to consider whether he need indulge in this habit in his own domicile, and whether the save of his after-dinner cigar would not conduce to his happiness as well as to Angelina’s comfort; and really I have small heart to describe how Edwin can have a comfortable corner in his dining-room when I feel convinced the more comfortable he is made the worse effect it will have on everything in any pretty room.