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Elizabeth R. Warren
Her Work
1827 1838
It was the border of purple, green, and yellow roses that awakened his enthusiasm, and the queer little something—which might have been an hourglass and might have been a dressmaker’s form—which divided the dates at the bottom. As for the mottoes he found less in them to care for. “Give Us this Day our Daily Bread” was hackneyed and incomplete, while “Dare to do Right” had so many violent comparisons of color that none would have thought of paying heed to its advice. The pictures were uninteresting, a few depressing, a few inexcusable, even when their period was taken into consideration. Aside from the sampler, the most artistic of the wall-decorations, Burton decided, were the three calendars.
The furniture was all of it good, if somewhat out of repair. The big lounge was of mahogany veneer with a high, straight back of such delightfully simple lines as to atone for the slippery, inhospitable horsehair with which it was upholstered. There were some good chairs, a folding card-table, a swell-front, claw-footed lowboy, and a solid mahogany desk, beautiful enough to drive a man to theft. The floor was polished until it shone, and over it were scattered four rag rugs whose tones of gray and brown or gray and blue were a delight. After a week of practice Burton was able to step upon these rugs without having them slide from under him. But he never became proud and careless, and this evening as he carried the bottle of Scotch across to the table he held his breath and only felt quite safe when he had lowered himself carefully into his fiddle-back, rush-bottomed chair.
The table was placed by the window commanding the Castle, and during supper he studied speculatively the pregnability of the place. What he saw delighted him. The rose-vines made it possible to attain the second-story balcony with a minimum of exertion. With the Princess once in his arms—— He paused suddenly just there and closed his eyes, striving with a pleasant warmth under the pocket of his negligee shirt to imagine the situation thoroughly. With the Princess in his arms! With those wide brown eyes just under his own and the pearl-like cheek within reach—— He shook his head and opened his own eyes, which, by the way, were steel-colored and not brown, and looked across the two gardens to the Castle.
“If I had you there, Princess,” he murmured, “I very much fear we would never escape from the Ogre. We should be caught like rats in a trap—I think that’s the correct term, though hardly complimentary to you—up there on the balcony. Personally, I wouldn’t much care; with those lips of yours where I could reach them, my dear, the Ogre might do his worst and be hanged to him; but then there’s you to think of. On the whole, perhaps it would be best if I had you rescued by proxy. There’s Bob, for instance!”
He smiled broadly at the thought and refilled his glass.