"It was one of a row of houses," said Mrs. Douglas. "There was a gate and a strip of garden, and a gravel-path leading to the front door. On your right as you went in at the door was the dining-room--but before we got to that your father had to show me everything in the little entrance hall and tell me the price. Very ugly things you would call them--you who like crumbling Jacobean chests and gate tables; but I was very well pleased with the brand new hall table (on which stood a large brass bell), the hat-stand, and the thing for umbrellas. I really liked them much better than the beautiful old things at Etterick; they were new and they were mine. The dining-room had a bow window which held a green wire stand full of growing ferns. (Isn't it odd that after forty years I remember every detail?) The room was hardly big enough to hold the huge mahogany sideboard with the mirrored back, and all the other furniture." "I remember the pictures," Ann said, "at least I expect they were the same as at Kirkcaple and Glasgow--big steel engravings; one of a slave market which I liked very much, and another that the boys liked better, of fat priests looking at the provisions brought by the country people for the Monastery--ducks and fowls, and a large salmon and a slain deer. We made up stories about those pictures." "The drawing-room was the crowning glory of the house," Mrs. Douglas went on. She was not listening to her daughter; she was living over again that first enchanting peep at her own house. "My father furnished it for us, and everything he did was well done. It was midnight before we had finished supper, but I couldn't have slept without seeing it. The wall-paper was pure white with bunches of gilt flowers; it was your father's choice and I thought I had seldom seen anything so beautiful. How dull it must be for women who marry men who take no interest in the house! I'm thankful that I had a man who was interested in every thing. It made doing things so much more worth while. He was so innocent the way he showed his belongings to people, taking their interest for granted, like a child. I can see him now watching my face as the full glory of the room burst on me. It was lit by a glittering glass gasalier hung from the ceiling; I had known only lamps and candles. The rosewood suite was covered with bright crimson rep, there were crimson rep curtains at the bow window, a chiffonier with a marble top stood against one wall, our shining new piano against another, a round rosewood table in the middle of the room, and an ottoman covered with bead work in the window. Really, Ann, I can hardly forgive you when I think that when you grew up you made me part with the chiffonier and the rosewood table, and the ottoman, and that _comfortable_ couch." "What a vindictive mother!" said Ann. "But why did you do it? Surely my eighteen-year-old yearnings after a high-art drawing-room could have been quelled."