actually the daily bread of the family."--Written of Maria
Edgeworth's home.

Pamela Reston stood in Bella Bathgate's parlour and surveyed it
disconsolately.

It was papered in a trying shade of terra-cotta and the walls were
embellished by enlarged photographs of the Bathgate family--decent,
well-living people, but plain-headed to a degree. Linoleum covered the
floor. A round table with a red-and-green cloth occupied the middle of
the room, and two arm-chairs and six small chairs stood about stiffly
like sentinels. Pamela had tried them all and found each one more
unyielding than the next. The mantelshelf, painted to look like some
uncommon kind of marble, supported two tall glass jars bright blue and
adorned with white raised flowers, which contained bunches of dried
grasses ("silver shekels" Miss Bathgate called them), rather dusty and
tired-looking. A mahogany sideboard stood against one wall and was
heavily laden with vases and photographs. Hard lace curtains tinted a
deep cream shaded the bow-window.

"This is grim," said Pamela to herself. "Something must be done. First
of all, I must get them to send me some rugs--they will cover this awful
floor--and half a dozen cushions and some curtains and bits of
embroidery and some table linen and sheets and things. Idiot that I was
not to bring them with me!... And what could I do to the walls? I don't
know how far one may go with landladies, but I hardly think one could
ask them to repaper walls to each stray lodger's liking."

Miss Bathgate had not so far shown herself much inclined for
conversation. She had met her lodger on the doorstep the night before,
had uttered a few words of greeting, and had then confined herself to
warning the man to watch the walls when he carried up the trunks, and to
wondering aloud what anyone could want with so much luggage, and where
in the world it was to find room. She had been asked to have dinner
ready, and at eight o'clock Pamela had come down to the sitting-room to
find a coarse cloth folded in two and spread on one-half of the round
table. A knife, a fork, a spoon lay on the cloth, flanked on one side by
an enormous cruet and on the other by four large spoons, laid crosswise,
and a thick tumbler. An aspidistra in a pot completed the table
decorations.

The dinner consisted of stewed steak, with turnip and carrots, and a
large dish of potatoes, followed by a rice pudding made without eggs and
a glass dish of prune