is room at present. The floor is to have
a matting, one of those heavy, cloth-like mattings. Auntie Dingley has
presented me with one fine old Persian rug from the Marcy library, which
she insists is out of key with the rest of the stuff. I'm glad it
is--it'll furnish the key to my decorations. Then I've a splendid old desk
I picked up in a place where they temporarily forgot themselves in setting
a price on it. That's going by the window. I've a little Duerer engraving,
and a few good foreign photographs Juliet has put under glass for me. For
the rest I have--what I like best--clear space, pipe-and-hearth room, the
bamboo chairs off the porch with some winter cushions in, my books--and
that."

He pointed to the windows, outside which lay a long country vista
stretching away over fields and river to the woods in the distance,
turning rich autumn tints now under the late October frosts.

"It's enough," said Carey, with the suppressed sigh which usually
accompanied any allusion of his to Anthony's environment. "Dens are too
stuffy, as a rule. Fellows try to see how much useless lumber they can
accumulate in altogether inadequate space."

"But you ought to have a couch," said Judith.

"Oh, yes, I'm going to have a couch," assented Anthony, laughing across
her head at Juliet. "A gem of a couch--we're making it ourselves. You're
not to see it till it's done. It'll be no brickbat couch, either--it'll be
a flowery bed of ease--or, if not flowery, invitingly covered with some
stunning stuff Juliet has fished out of a neighbour's attic."

"Now, come and see the nursery," Juliet proposed, and the party crowded
through the door into the living-room, around to the one by its side which
opened into an attractive room behind the den, all air and sunshine.

"I refuse to suggest," said Cathcart instantly, "the decorations for this
place."

"That's good," remarked Anthony cheerfully. "So much verbiage out of the
way."

"It'll be pink and white, I suppose," said Judith. "Pink is the colour for
boys, I'm told."

Behind all their backs Anthony glanced at his wife, affection and
amusement in his face. She read the look and smiled back. It was no part
of their plan to let the boy grow up alone. And as a mother she seemed to
him far more beautiful than she had ever been.

"We are going to have a little paper with nursery-rhyme pictures all over
it," explained Juliet. "There are all sorts of softly harmonising colours
in it. And ju