of dark red leather, like that of many of the
book-bindings, and the personal touch that makes the desk _mine_ is a
bowl of roses. Between the two windows in the shallow recess, I have
placed an aquarium, a recent acquisition that delights my soul. The
aquarium is simply an oblong glass box mounted on a teak stand, with a
tracery of teak carving outlining the box, which is the home of the most
gorgeous fan-tailed goldfish. There are water plants in the box, too,
and funny little Chinese temples and dwarf trees. I love to house my
little people happily--my dogs and my birds and my fish. Wee Toi, my
little Chinese dog, has a little house all his own, an old Chinese
lacquer box with a canopy top and little gold bells. It was once the
shrine of some little Chinese god, I suppose, but Wee Toi is very happy
in it, and you can see that it was meant for him in the beginning. It
sits by the fireplace and gives the room an air of real hominess. I was
so pleased with the aquarium and the Chinese lacquer bed for Wee Toi
that I devised a birdcage to go with them, a square cage of gilt wires,
with a black lacquer pointed canopy top, with little gilt bells at the
pointed eaves. The cage is fixed to a shallow lacquer tray, and is the
nicest place you can imagine for a whistling bullfinch to live in. I
suppose I could have a Persian cat on a gorgeous cushion to complete the
place, but I can't admit cats into the room. I plan gorgeous cushions
for _other_ people's "little people," when they happen to be cats.

Miss Marbury's sitting-room is on the next floor, exactly like mine,
architecturally, but we have worked them out differently. I think there
is nothing more interesting than the study of the different developments
of a series of similar rooms, for instance, a dozen drawing-rooms,
twelve stories deep, in a modern apartment house! Each room is left by
the builder with the same arrangement of doors and windows, the same
wall spaces and moldings, the same opportunity for good or bad
development. It isn't often our luck to see all twelve of the rooms, but
sometimes we see three or four of them, and how amazingly different they
are! How amusing is the suggestion of personality, or lack of it!

Now in these two sitting-rooms in our house the rooms are exactly the
same in size, in exposure, in the placing of doors and windows and
fireplaces, and we have further paralleled our arrangement by placing
our day beds in the same wall space, but