CHAPTER IV—BARGAINS, BARGAINS EVERYWHERE!
With the worry of house-hunting gone, the young friends felt at liberty to be deliberate while apportioning their time. Anne took Polly and Eleanor to the West End School, the morning following their meeting with Mr. Fabian, and introduced them to the proprietress as the two young ladies she had written about.
Polly thought the elegant mansion that looked more like a prince’s residence than a school, would keep her from concentrating upon her lessons. While Anne and the principal of the select school talked business, Polly glanced about the reception room.
The rugs were beautiful, most of them having the faded soft colors of the antique Persian and Turkish. But the furniture was too gorgeous in upholstering for the type of room. Then there were heavy boxed oil paintings in rich gilt frames, hanging on the walls; and teakwood pedestals holding statuettes and busts; and onyx stands with palms. The mantel was loaded with bric-a-brac of all sorts. Many other minor items showed bad taste in whoever furnished the room.
Polly felt all this, but could not explain just why she resented such a conglomeration of color and furnishings. But Eleanor, having had the results of a decorator’s judgment displayed in her home, in Chicago, felt inclined to smile at what she saw about her. It was sure evidence of Polly’s improvement in artistic interiors since the day she thought the green window-shades quite the thing, to this time when the indiscriminate mixing of colors offended her eyes.
“I really am relieved to hear that you will not be resident here, Miss Stewart, as I need your room for two boarders. I had planned to enlarge the dormitory this year, but everything costs so much that I postponed it. Now this extra room will come in very nicely for me,” Mrs. Wellington was saying when Polly and Eleanor had finished a survey of the room, and rejoined Anne.
“Girls, Mrs. Wellington says we may have a look at the class-rooms. Would you like to go with me?” said Anne.
Without demur they followed the lady of the house. They passed through the formal parlor where guests of distinction were entertained. Here the two girls also saw the lack of taste in furnishing. Gilded furniture with delicate satin upholstery, fought with wallpaper of heavy Spanish-leather design. Curtains and portières were of velour, heavily edged with fringe. Valances of velour were over the windows, and on the mantel. Instead of having a delicate French carpet on the floor, there were thick napped dark-toned Beloochistan rugs.
The long library opened out from the parlor, and here there was an atmosphere of rest, because the entire wall spaces were lined with dark cabinets whose shelves were well filled with volumes in bindings made to harmonize with the rich paper that showed above the book-cases. The window-seats were built in and upholstered in tapestry to match the paper. The tables and leather armchairs were not so glaringly out of keeping with the room as the furniture in the first two rooms had been.
Mrs. Wellington waved her hand carelessly at this room: “When I bought this house, all the books went with it, just as you see them now. The window-seats are still covered as they were, but I hope soon to spend some money in making this library more cheerful for the girls. I like bright colors, but that dun wall paper and that dull tapestry on the window cushions gives me the blues. If the books had not been such a bargain—the executor of the estate was most anxious to dispose of them—I never would have taken them. Their dull green morocco bindings make the room seem heavy, don’t you think?”