“I’d like to see all your rooms.” Ida rose and stretched herself luxuriously. Ora thought she looked like a beautiful Persian cat. “Houses interest me mor’n pictures, although I’ll buy them too some day. Not old masters, though. They’d give me the willys. This carved oak with faded gilt panels is a dream!” she exclaimed with instant appreciation. “I’d learn wood-carving if there was anyone in this God-forsaken camp to teach it.” Ora clapped her hands, and once more, to Ida’s startled eyes she looked like a very young girl. “I studied several of the crafts when I was in Germany,” she cried, “wood-carving, brass-hammering, enamelling. I’ll set up a workshop--let me see, the attic would be the best place, and the furnace warms it--and teach you, and work myself. It’s just what I need. I wonder I never thought of it----” “Need what?” interrupted Ida sharply. “Oh, a relief from too much study. There’s nothing like a craft for mental workers--I should have thought of it before,” she repeated. “What do you say?” “I’d like it first rate, and I guess you’ll find me quick enough with my hands, whatever you think of my cocoanut.” “I think very highly of your cocoanut. This is my little drawing-room.” Ida stood on the threshold for a few moments without comment. She had never cast a thought to her Puritan inheritance, but anger, disapproval, possessed her. She hated the room, but had no reason to give. “You don’t like my favourite room?” asked Ora, who was watching her curiously. “Is it your favourite room?” She turned this over. “No, I guess I like the heavy, solid, durable things best.” She struggled for her reasons. “You get your money’s worth in them. This looks like the first Chinook would blow it clear over into North Dakota, or as if you might come in some morning and find a heap of dust where it had been the night before--like a corpse when the air’s let in. I didn’t mind your bedroom being dainty and looking like some sea shells I saw once in a picture frame,--it looks all of a piece, too, you might say; but this--with them queer thin faded out chairs and sofas--the colours on the wood even, and them pictures over the doors and mantel look like they would do the final disappearing act while you wait--well, there’s something kinder mysterious--ghostly--it looks so stiff--and--at the same time--so kinder immoral----” “I wonder if what you are groping for is the atmosphere of the past, which all old furniture must have, particularly if rearranged in something like its original setting.” Ora was regarding her with a new interest. “This furniture came out of a _hôtel_--what we would call a residence--with a history--several histories, I should think--and I fancy it was all frivolous, and wicked, and exciting----” “I ain’t no spiritualist!” said Ida tartly. “Is that what you’re driving at?”