“Do you like it?” she asked nervously.
He dropped into the green chair, his broad hands gripped round the petticoat, and looked about him with amusement.
“Everything’s crooked,” he said lazily, at last, his mouth drolly curved and his eyes merry. They were such keen, outdoor eyes; they seemed to pierce through shams. She was afraid that he saw the pins in the piano back. She had been obliged to join two lengths of silk together, and had been too eager to stay and sew it.
“Yes, everything is crooked; that is one of the fundamental rules of modern decoration,” she told him flippantly. “Piano across one corner, table across the other; nothing stiff, nothing solid.”
“Umph!”
He was not impressed. He was certainly laughing at the single knickerbocker of silk into which she had stuck a pot of late musk.
“You’ve blocked the door of the china closet with that jar of feathers.”
“The china closet! How delightful. It never occurred to me to ask what was beyond that door.” She tried the handle, then asked him for the key.
“Gainah has it.”
“I’ll get her to give it me.”