“Well,” said she, “don't you think it was about time we had something nice like this, after we had pulled and tugged for nothing all our lives? Don't you think we deserve it if anybody does?”
“I certainly do,” replied Horace Allen, warmly; yet he regarded her with somewhat the same look of astonishment as Henry. It did not seem to him that it could be Sylvia Whitman who was speaking. The thought crossed his mind, as he took his place at the table, that possibly coming late in life, after so many deprivations, good-fortune had disturbed temporarily the even balance of her good New England sense.
Then he looked about him with delight. “I say, this is great!” he cried, boyishly. There was something incurably boyish about Horace Allen, although he was long past thirty. “By George, that Chippendale sideboard is a beauty,” he said, gazing across at a fine old piece full of dull high lights across its graceful surfaces.
Sylvia colored with pleasure, but she had been brought up to disclaim her possessions to others than her own family. “Mrs. Jim Jones has got a beautiful one she bought selling Calkin's soap,” she said. “She thinks it's prettier than this, and I must say it's real handsome. It's solid oak and has a looking-glass on it. This hasn't got any glass.”
Horace laughed. He gazed at a corner-closet with diamond-paned doors.
“That is a perfectly jolly closet, too,” he said; “and those are perfect treasures of old dishes.”
“I think they are rather pretty,” said Henry. He was conscious of an admiration for the old blue-and-white ware with its graceful shapes and quaint decorations savoring of mystery and the Far East, but he realized that his view was directly opposed to his wife's. This time Sylvia spoke quite in earnest. As far as the Indian china was concerned, she had her convictions. She was a cheap realist to the bone.
She sniffed. “I suppose there's those that likes it,” said she, “but as for me, I can't see how anybody with eyes in their heads can look twice at old, cloudy, blue stuff like that when they can have nice, clear, white ware, with flowers on it that are flowers, like this Calkin's soap set. There ain't a thing on the china in that closet that's natural. Whoever saw a prospect all in blue, the trees and plants, and heathen houses, and the heathen, all blue? I like things to be natural, myself.”
Horace laughed, and extended his plate for another piece of pie.
“It's an acquired taste,” he said.