He was in his own "den," one of the smallest rooms in the house, meant
for a dressing-room, and opening off his bedroom. He had fitted it up
as a nondescript lair, and indulged in ribald mirth if Ena tried to
dignify it with the name of "study." All the pictures of the big
animals he hadn't killed were there--beautiful wild things he felt he
had the right to know socially, as he had never harmed them or their
most distant relatives. In an old glass-fronted, secretary bookcase of
mahogany, the first piece of "parlour furniture" his parents had ever
bought, were the dear books of Petro's boyhood and early youth, and
above, on the gray-papered wall, hung a portrait of mother, which her
son had had painted by an unfashionable artist as a "birthday present
from his affectionate self" at the age of sixteen. An ancient easy
chair and a queer old sofa still had the original, slippery, black
horsehair off which Petro and Ena had slid as children. Petro had
named the sofa "the whale," and the squat chair "the seal." Both
shiny, slippery, black things really did resemble sea monsters, and
had never lost for Petro their mysterious personality.
There were some cushions and a fire screen, the bead-and-wool flowers
of which mother had worked in early married life, and on the floor, in
front of the friendly wood fire which Petro loved, lay a rug which was
also her handiwork It was made of dresses her children had worn when
they were very, very little, and some of her own which Petro could
even now remember.
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