lossom-time it sprinkled pink
petals on the garden hats of the women; and on the grass they fell, to
twist Tennyson, softlier than tired eyelids on tired eyes.

So Marie Louise adored her new home with its unpromising entrance and
its superb surprise from the rear windows. When she broke the news to
Polly Widdicombe, that she was leaving her, they had a good fight over
it. Yet Polly could hardly insist that Marie Louise stay with her
forever, especially when Marie Louise had a perfectly good home of her
own.

Polly went along for a morning of reconstruction work. There were
pictures, chairs, cushions, and knickknacks that simply had to be
hidden away. The original tenants evidently had the theory that a bare
space on a wall or a table was as indecent as on a person's person.

They had taken crude little chromos and boxed them in gaudy frames,
many of whose atrocities were aggravated by panels of plush of a color
that could hardly be described by any other name than fermented prune.
Over the corner of these they had thrown "throws" or drapes of
malicious magenta horribly figured in ruthless incompatibilities.

Chairs of unexplainable framework were upholstered with fabrics of
studied delirium. Every mantel was an exhibit of models of what not to
do. When Henry James said that Americans had no end of taste, but most
of it was bad, he must have based his conclusions on such a
conglomerate as this.

Polly and Marie Louise found some of the furniture bad enough to be
amusing. But they toted a vanload of it into closets and storerooms.
Where the pictures came away they left staring spaces of unfaded
wall-paper. Still, they were preferable to the pictures.

By noon the women were exhausted. They washed their dust-smutted hands
and faces and exclaimed upon the black water they left. But the
exercise had given them appetite, and when Marie Louise locked the
front door she felt all the comfort of a householder. She had a home
of her very own to lock up, and though she had roamed through
pleasures and palaces, she agreed that, be it ever so horrible,
there's no place like home.

She and Polly were early to their luncheon engagement with Major
Widdicombe. Their appetites disputed the clock. Polly decided to
telephone her husband for Heaven's sake to come at once to her
rescue.

While Polly was telephoning Marie Louise sat waiting on a divan. Her
muscles were so tired that she grew nearly as placidly animal as her
sister