Then she would drag
me off to some terrible private view full of the same people all
staring at and gabbling to each other, or looking at pictures that made
poor me gasp and shudder. No, I am thankful to be back at my own sweet
Riseholme again. I can work and think here."
She looked round the panelled entrance-hall with a glow of warm content
at toeing at home again that quite eclipsed the mere physical heat
produced by her walk from the station. Wherever her eyes fell, those
sharp dark eyes that resembled buttons covered with shiny American
cloth, they saw nothing that jarred, as so much in London jarred. There
were bright brass jugs on the window sill, a bowl of pot-pourri on the
black table in the centre, an oak settee by the open fireplace, a
couple of Persian rugs on the polished floor. The room had its
quaintness, too, such as she had alluded to in her memorable essay read
before the Riseholme Literary Society, called "Humour in Furniture,"
and a brass milkcan served as a receptacle for sticks and umbrellas.
Equally quaint was the dish of highly realistic stone fruit that stood
beside the pot-pourri and the furry Japanese spider that sprawled in a
silk web over the window.
Such was the fearful verisimilitude of this that Lucia's new housemaid
had once fled from her duties in the early morning, to seek the
assistance of the gardener in killing it.
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