Maggie reappeared to clear away the table.
"Let's go in the parlor," suggested Travis, rising. "Don't you
want to?"
The parlor was the front room overlooking the street, and was
reached by the long hall that ran the whole length of the flat,
passing by the door of each one of its eight rooms in turn.
Travis preceded Condy, and turned up one of the burners in colored
globe of the little brass chandelier.
The parlor was a small affair, peopled by a family of chairs and
sofas robed in white drugget. A gold-and-white effect had been
striven for throughout the room. The walls had been tinted
instead of papered, and bunches of hand-painted pink flowers tied
up with blue ribbons straggled from one corner of the ceiling.
Across one angle of the room straddled a brass easel upholding a
crayon portrait of Travis at the age of nine, "enlarged from a
photograph." A yellow drape ornamented one corner of the frame,
while another drape of blue depended from one end of the
mantelpiece.
The piano, upon which nobody ever played, balanced the easel in an
opposite corner. Over the mantelpiece hung in a gilded frame a
steel engraving of Priscilla and John Alden; and on the mantel
itself two bisque figures of an Italian fisher boy and girl kept
company with the clock, a huge timepiece, set in a red plush
palette, that never was known to go. But at the right of the
fireplace, and balancing the tuft of pampa-grass to the left, was
an inverted section of a sewer-pipe painted blue and decorated
with daisies.
Pages:
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32