The Angel looked thoughtful.
"I hope it will work," he said.
"We can but try it. I am doing this because I wish our friends to meet us together, and I don't approve of this separating men and women,—the women remaining alone to gossip while the men go away to smoke. It is too narrowing on us and too broadening on you."
"I like it,—in theory,—but some men are chimneys. They don't know how to smoke when ladies are present."
"They will soon learn!" I declared, stoutly. "I shall be so attentive to their comfort, so ready with an ash-tray, so eager to offer them the last cigar in the jar (if I think they have smoked enough) that they will notice my slightest cough."
Aubrey waxed enthusiastic.
"An evening spent in that room will be 'An Education in Polite
Smoking,' won't it?"
"And," I went on, "then when we are rich and want a truly handsome drawingroom we can furnish it in pink silk and cupids with a light heart, for behold, we will simply move all this comfort I have described into a library, and the wear on the furniture will redeem it from newness and give it the proper air of age and use. There is nothing more vulgar to my mind than a perfectly new library. It looks—well, you know!"
"It does," said the Angel, with conviction. "All of that!"
We discussed these theories in detail, made many corrections, and finally went down to buy. But a handsome shop and money in my pocket always excite me so that what little common sense I was born with instantly departs, and I buy feverishly, mostly things I do not want and could not use. So the Angel adopted a good, safe rule. When he saw my eyes begin to glitter with a "I-must-have-that-or-die" expression, he used to take me by the arm and say: