The latest whim was the new breakfast room in which they now sat, with the winter sun streaming through the small panes of a wide south window.
For sixty odd years Aunt Maude had eaten her breakfast promptly at eight from a tray in her own room. It had been a hearty breakfast of hot breads and chops. At one she had lunched decently in the long dim dining-room in a mid-Victorian atmosphere of Moquet and marble mantels, carved walnut and plush curtains.
And now back of this sacred dining-room Eve had built out a structure of glass and of stone, looking over a scrap of enclosed city garden, and furnished in black and white, relieved by splashes of brilliant color. Aunt Maude hated the green parrot and the flame-colored fishes in the teakwood aquarium. She thought that Eve looked like an actress in the little jacket with the apple-green ribbons which she wore when she came down at twelve.
"Aren't we ever going to eat any more luncheons?" had been Aunt Maude's plaintive question when she realized that she was in the midst of a gastronomic revolution.
"Nobody does, dearest. If you are really up-to-date you breakfast and dine—the other meals are vague—illusory."
"People in my time——" Aunt Maude had stated.
"People in your time," Evelyn had interrupted flippantly, "were wise and good. Nobody wants to be wise and good in these days. We want to be smart and sophisticated. Your good old stuffy dining-rooms were like your good old stuffy consciences. Now my breakfast room is symbolic—the green and white for the joy of living, and the black for my sins."
She stood up on tiptoe to feed the parrot. "To-morrow," she announced, "I am to have a black cat. I found one at the cat show—with green eyes. And I am going to match his cushion to his eyes."
"I'd like a cat," Aunt Maude said, unexpectedly, "but I can't say that I care for black ones. The grays are the best mousers."
Eve looked at her reproachfully. "Do you think that cats catch mice?" she demanded,—"up-to-date cats? They sit on cushions and add emphasis to the color scheme. Winifred Ames has a yellow one to go with her primrose panels."