d of some sort, but it's only cast-iron painted;
indestructible, you see; they told me that was the latest
dodge--wonderful how cheaply they turn them out, isn't it?'

'I thought you said you were helped?'

'Oh, I didn't want any help _here_--this is only the passage, you know!'

Yes, it was only the passage--and yet she had been picturing such a
charming entrance, with a draped arch, a graceful lamp, a fresh bright
paper, a small buffet of genuine old oak, and so on. She suppressed a
sigh as she passed on; after all, so long as the rooms themselves were
all right, it did not so very much matter, and she knew that her
mother's taste could be trusted.

But on the threshold of the dining-room she stopped aghast. The walls
had been distempered a particularly hideous drab; the curtains were
mustard yellow; the carpet was a dull brown; the mottled marble
mantelpiece, for which she had been intending to substitute one in
walnut wood with tiles, still shone in slabs of petrified brawn; there
was a huge mahogany sideboard of a kind she had only seen in
old-fashioned hotels.

'Comfortable, eh?' remarked George. 'Lots of wear in those curtains!'

Unhappily there was, as Ella was only too well aware. 'You did _this_
room yourself too, then, George?' she managed to say, without betraying
herself by her voice.

'Yes, I chose everything here. You see, Ella, we shall only use this
room for meals.'

'Only for meals, yes,' she acquiesced with a shudder; 'but--George,
surely you said mother had helped you with the rooms?'

'What! your mother? No, Ella; her notions are rather too grand for me.
It was Jessie and Carrie I meant. Just come and see what they've made of
my den.'

Ella followed. The window--which had commanded such a cheerful outlook
into one of the pretty gardens, with a pink thorn, a laburnum-tree or
two, and some sycamores which still flourish fresh and fair on Campden
Hill--was obscured now by some detestable contrivance in transparent
paper imitating stained glass.

'That was the girls' notion,' said George, following the direction of
her eyes; 'they fixed it all themselves--it was their present to me.
Pretty of them to think of it, wasn't it? I call it an immense
improvement, and, you see, it's stuck on with some patent cement
varnish, so it can't rub off. You get the effect better if you stand
here--_now_, see how well the colours come out in the sun!'

If only they _would_ come out! But what could she do