“The drawing-room, of course.” Sophie swam up and down it. “That mantelpiece—Orpheus and Eurydice—is the best of them all. Isn't it marvellous? Why, the room seems furnished with nothing in it! How's that, George?”
“It's the proportions. I've noticed it.”
“I saw a Heppelwhite couch once”—Sophie laid her finger to her flushed cheek and considered. “With two of them—one on each side—you wouldn't need anything else. Except—there must be one perfect mirror over that mantelpiece.”
“Look at that view. It's a framed Constable,” her husband cried.
“No; it's a Morland—a parody of a Morland. But about that couch, George. Don't you think Empire might be better than Heppelwhite? Dull gold against that pale green? It's a pity they don't make spinets nowadays.”
“I believe you can get them. Look at that oak wood behind the pines.”
“'While you sat and played toccatas stately, at the clavichord,'” Sophie hummed, and, head on one side, nodded to where the perfect mirror should hang.
Then they found bedrooms with dressing-rooms and powdering-closets, and steps leading up and down—boxes of rooms, round, square, and octagonal, with enriched ceilings and chased door-locks.
“Now about servants. Oh!” She had darted up the last stairs to the chequered darkness of the top floor, where loose tiles lay among broken laths, and the walls were scrawled with names, sentiments, and hop records. “They've been keeping pigeons here,” she cried.
“And you could drive a buggy through the roof anywhere,” said George.