“House decoration. My dear, I went in to see her yesterday—I forgot to tell you; it was when you were over at the Marksbys’. You know there’s a studio to their house?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Well, her father has made it over to her. She took a course of lessons, and she’s decorated it herself. It’s a dream!” said Julia. “When I look round this room and think of Rita’s, it makes me feel sick.”
“What’s the matter with this room?”
“Oh, what’s the matter! Just this, Maudie, that since we evolved this room out of our own ignorant, vulgar minds, I’ve been getting educated.”
“My dear, I thought we had finished our education long ago,” said Maudie, somewhat taken aback.
“That’s where your limitations come in, Maudie. If ever you get married, you’ll find that you have everything to learn that will make life happy and comfortable to you, unless you enter yourself at the Polytechnic beforehand.”
“I might do worse,” said Maudie, looking round. She honestly couldn’t see, poor, prosaic girl that she was, that anything was amiss with their own especial sanctum. It was bright, cheerful, dainty, and scrupulously clean. There were evidences on all sides that it was a room in which people lived a great share of their lives. A great Persian cat lay on a blue velvet cushion on one side of the hearth, and a very presentable black spaniel was curled up in a padded basket on the other. “I’m sure,” she said, looking into the blazing depths of the fire, and then helping herself to another piece of muffin, “I’m sure there’s not a prettier room in the Park than ours.”
“Oh, my dear, don’t talk nonsense! It’s horrid. We’ve got a Louis Quinze paper, Louis Quinze chintz, and make-believe Japanese bead and reed curtains. We’ve got cheap bazaar rubbish all over the place, and not one scrap of furniture worth calling furniture in it. The carpet gets up and hits the walls, and the walls in their turn slap the screen, and the screen clashes with the chintz, and you and I clash with everything else. Oh, it’s dreadful, it’s horrible!”
“We’ve spent most of our dress allowance on it,” wailed Maudie.