By this time they had reached the dining-room. It was a very pretty little room, its walls not papered, but painted a soft amber colour. No pictures were on the walls.
'I like the idea of your walls,' Ericson said. 'The walls are themselves the decoration.'
'Yes,' she said, 'that was exactly our idea—let the colour be the decoration; but I don't know that I ever heard anyone discover the idea before. People generally ask me why I don't have pictures on the dining-room walls, and then I have to explain as well as I can that the colour is decoration enough.'
'And then, I suppose, some of them look amazed, and can't understand how you——'
'Oh, indeed, yes,' she answered.
The dinner was simple and unpretentious, but excellent, almost perfect in its way. A clear soup, a sole, an entrée or two, a bit of venison, a sweet—with good wines, but not too many of them.
'You have a good cook, Mrs. Sarrasin,' the Dictator said.
'I am made proud by your saying so. We don't keep a cook—I do it all myself—am very fond of cooking.'
The Dictator looked round at her in surprise. Was this a jest? Oh, no; there was no jesting expression on Mrs. Sarrasin's face. She was merely making a statement of fact. Ericson began to suspect that the one thing which the lady had least capacity for making, or, perhaps, for understanding, was a jest. But he was certainly amazed at the versatility of her accomplishments, and he frankly told her so.
'You see, we have but a small income,' she explained quietly, 'and I like to do all I can; and Oisin likes my cookery—he is used to it. We only keep two maids and this man'—alluding to the momentarily absent attendant—'and he was an old soldier of Oisin's. I will tell you his story some time—it is interesting in its way.'