ar yellow glass, held rosy
pippins or sprawling purple grapes on the table in the window, the
sideboard carried old jugs and flagons in blackened silver or dull
pottery.

Upstairs the sunny perfection of the bedrooms was not marred by the need
of so much as a cake of violet soap. Julia revelled in details here:
flowers in the bedrooms must match the hangings; there must be so many
fringed towels and so many plain, in each bathroom. She amused as well
as edified Jim with her sedate assurance in the matter of engaging
maids; her cheeks would grow very pink when interviews were afoot, but
she never lost her air of calm.

"We are as good as they are," said Julia, "but how hard it is to
remember it when you are talking to them!"

Presently Foo Ting was established supreme in the kitchen, Lizzie
secured as waitress, and Ellie, Lizzie's sister, engaged to do upstairs
work. Chadwick, Jim's chauffeur, was accustomed occasionally to enact
also the part of valet, so that it was with a real luxury of service
that the young Studdifords settled down for the winter.

Julia had anticipated this settling as preceding a time of quiet, when
she and Jim should loiter over their snug little dinners, should come to
know the comforts of their own chairs, at each side of the library fire,
and laugh and cry over some old book, or talk and dream while they
stared into the coals. The months were racing about to her first wedding
anniversary, yet she felt that she really knew Jim only in a certain
superficial, holiday sense--she knew what cocktail he liked best, of
course, and what seats in the theatre; she was quite sure of the effect
of her own beauty upon him. But she longed for the real Jim, the soul
that was hidden somewhere under his gay mask, under the trim,
cleanshaven, smiling face. When there was less confusion, less laughing
and interrupting and going about, then she would find her husband, Julia
thought, and they would have long silent hours together in which to
build the foundation of their life.

Her beautiful earnest face came to have a somewhat strained and wistful
look, as the weeks fled past without bringing the quiet, empty time for
which she longed. All about her now stretched the glittering spokes of
the city's great social wheel, every mail brought her a flood of notes,
every quarter hour summoned her to the telephone, every fraction of the
day had its appointed pleasure. Julia must swiftly eliminate from her
life much