Pamela was excitedly unswathing her treasures from yards of tissue paper. “We’ve bought a few things,” she said pleasantly. “Sit down and look at them. That is an Indian god.” She held out an abominable brown figure. “Jethro was saying that the place wanted improving--bringing up to date. Of course, you never hear of the newest things down here. How should you? I got these cushions for the settle, and this--isn’t the embroidery lovely?--for the piano. A piano should never have its back against the wall. It is an ugly piece of furniture; its form is all against it. I told Jethro that there should have been a grand in that big room. That is the only endurable form of piano.” She was chattering the artistic jargon of a belated æsthete who had boarded at the house in Bloomsbury. Gainah hardly seemed to hear her. She had toppled down into one of the high-backed, rush-seated chairs, and was nervously moving her stained hands on her lap. “Don’t you like these rugs?” Pamela cut the string with one of the heavy buck-handled knives which was on the dinner-table. “They are to be thrown down in odd corners--anywhere. You can’t have too much color in a room. I must go and take my hat off.” She glanced at the waiting dinner-table and stacked her purchases carefully on the horsehair sofa. “I’ll arrange everything this afternoon. By tea-time you will hardly recognize the place. Cousin Jethro is so kind; he says that if I haven’t thought of everything he will drive me into Liddleshorn again to-morrow. These green glasses are for flowers. I must arrange them every day for dinner in schemes of color. There! That is one thing I forgot--an embroidered centerpiece. And we might have candle-shades, too. Those candlesticks,” she glanced at some heavy ones of Sheffield plate on the oak sideboard, “are the rage in London just now.” She ran out of the room. Gainah did not stir from her chair by the yawning hearth on which the first fire of the season smoldered. She gazed fixedly in her vacant way at the trash on the sofa. Only one thing that Pamela had said worked in her slow brain: “Jethro was saying that the place wanted improving.”