“Cream white, not dead white,” said I. “Wait a minute.” I ran to the shed and brought back two more of my pictures, an etching by Cameron which our professor of fine arts had once given me, and an oil painting acquired in a moment of rash expenditure several years before–the long line of Beacon Street houses across the Charles with the church spires rising here and there, and to the left Beacon Hill piling up to the golden dome of the State House.
“Now,” said I, “the walls have got to set off both these pictures, and books besides. They’ve got to be neutral. I want a greenish, brownish, yellowish olive, with the old beam in the centre of the ceiling in the same key, only a bit darker.”
The girl and the painter both laughed.
“You are so definite,” said she.
“But I want an indefinite tint,” I replied.
Again she laughed, though the painter looked puzzled.
“I’ll get my colours,” he said.
He mixed what he considered an olive tint, and laid a streak of it on the plaster.
“Too green,” said I.
He added something and tried again.