speak for itself, and not be mixed
up with everybody else's. You'd better bring us half a dozen to choose
from, and between me and you and Lucretia, we'll arrive at something
elegant and unique."

This was sadly disillusionizing to Littleton, and the second experience
was no less so. The refined outline sketches proffered by him were
unenthusiastically surveyed and languidly discarded like so many
wall-papers. It was evident that both the mother and daughter were
disappointed, and Littleton presently divined that their chief objection
was to the plainness of the several designs. This was made unmistakably
obvious when Mrs. Parsons, after exhibiting a number of photographs of
foreign public buildings with which she had armed herself, surveyed the
most ornate, holding it out with her head on one side, and exclaimed
impressively, "This is more the sort of thing we should like. I think
Mr. Parsons has already explained to you that he desired our house to be
as handsome as possible."

"I had endeavored to bear that in mind," Littleton retorted with spirit.
"I believe that either of these plans would give you a house which would
be handsome, interesting and in good taste."

"It does not seem to me that there is anything unique about any of
them," said Mrs. Parsons, with a cold sniff intended to be conclusive.
Nor did Littleton's efforts to explain that elaboration in a private
residence was liable to detract from architectural dignity and to
produce the effect of vulgarity fall upon receptive soil. The rich man's
wife listened in stony silence, at times raising her lorgnette to
examine as a curiosity this young man who was telling her--an American
woman who had travelled around the world and seen everything to be
seen--how she ought to build her own house. The upshot of this interview
was that Littleton was sent away with languid instructions to try again.
He departed, thinking melancholy thoughts and with fire in his soul,
which, for Selma's sake, he endeavored to keep out of his eyes.

CHAPTER VIII.

The departure of the Williamses to a smarter neighborhood was a trial
for Selma. She nursed the dispiriting reflection that she and Wilbur
might just as well be moving also; that a little foresight and
shrewdness on her husband's part would have enabled him to sell at a
handsome profit the house in which they were living; and that there was
no reason, except the sheer, happy faculty of making the most of
opportuniti