rth o' paint."

"Those rugs--"

"Remnants," she sighed, and showed me how artfully they had been pieced
together.

"The curtains--"

"Remnants."

"At all events the sofa--"

She raised its drapery, and I saw that the sofa was built of packing
cases.

"The desk--"

I really thought that I was safe this time, for could I not see the
drawers with their brass handles, the charming shelf for books, the
pigeon-holes with their coverings of silk?

"She made it out of three orange boxes," said the lady, at last a little
awed herself.

I looked around me despairingly, and my eye alighted on the holland
covering. "There is a fine chandelier in that holland bag," I said
coaxingly.

She sniffed and was raising an untender hand, when I checked her.
"Forbear, ma'am," I cried with authority, "I prefer to believe in that
bag. How much to be pitied, ma'am, are those who have lost faith in
everything." I think all the pretty things that the little nursery
governess had made out of nothing squeezed my hand for letting the
chandelier off.

"But, good God, ma'am," said I to madam, "what an exposure."

She intimated that there were other exposures upstairs.

"So there is a stair," said I, and then, suspiciously, "did she make
it?"

No, but how she had altered it.

The stair led to Mary's bedroom, and I said I would not look at that,
nor at the studio, which was a shed in the garden.

"Did she build the studio with her own hands?"

No, but how she had altered it.

"How she alters everything," I said. "Do you think you are safe, ma'am?"

She thawed a little under my obvious sympathy and honoured me with some
of her views and confidences. The rental paid by Mary and her husband
was not, it appeared, one on which any self-respecting domestic could
reflect with pride. They got the house very cheap on the understanding
that they were to vacate it promptly if anyone bought it for building
purposes, and because they paid so little they had to submit to the
indignity of the notice-board. Mary A---- detested the words "This space
to be sold," and had been known to shake her fist at them. She was as
elated about her house as if it were a real house, and always trembled
when any possible purchaser of spaces called.

As I have told you my own aphorism I feel I ought in fairness to record
that of this aggrieved servant. It was on the subject of art. "The
difficulty," she said, "is not to paint pictures, but to get frames for