No sooner was Ella inside the hall than her heart sank: 'Looks neat and nice, doesn't it?' said George cheerfully. 'You'd almost take that paper for real marble, wouldn't you? See how well they've done those veins. I like this yellowish colour better than green, don't you? It looks so cool in summer. That's a good strong hall-lamp--not what you call high art, exactly--but gives a rattling good light, and that's the main thing. Here, I'll light it up for you--confound it! they haven't turned the gas on yet. However, there's too much sunshine for it to show much, if they had. This linoleum is a capital thing: you might scrub as long as you liked and you'd never get _that_ pattern out!' 'No,' Ella agreed, with a tragic little smile, 'it--it looks as if it would last.' 'Last! I should just think so! And here's a hatstand--you could almost swear it was carved wood of some sort, but it's only cast-iron painted; indestructible, you see; they told me that was the latest dodge--wonderful how cheaply they turn them out, isn't it?' 'I thought you said you were helped?' 'Oh, I didn't want any help _here_--this is only the passage, you know!' Yes, it was only the passage--and yet she had been picturing such a charming entrance, with a draped arch, a graceful lamp, a fresh bright paper, a small buffet of genuine old oak, and so on. She suppressed a sigh as she passed on; after all, so long as the rooms themselves were all right, it did not so very much matter, and she knew that her mother's taste could be trusted. But on the threshold of the dining-room she stopped aghast. The walls had been distempered a particularly hideous drab; the curtains were mustard yellow; the carpet was a dull brown; the mottled marble mantelpiece, for which she had been intending to substitute one in walnut wood with tiles, still shone in slabs of petrified brawn; there was a huge mahogany sideboard of a kind she had only seen in old-fashioned hotels. 'Comfortable, eh?' remarked George. 'Lots of wear in those curtains!' Unhappily there was, as Ella was only too well aware. 'You did _this_ room yourself too, then, George?' she managed to say, without betraying herself by her voice. 'Yes, I chose everything here. You see, Ella, we shall only use this room for meals.' 'Only for meals, yes,' she acquiesced with a shudder; 'but--George, surely you said mother had helped you with the rooms?' 'What! your mother? No, Ella; her notions are rather too grand for me. It was Jessie and Carrie I meant. Just come and see what they've made of my den.' Ella followed. The window--which had commanded such a cheerful outlook into one of the pretty gardens, with a pink thorn, a laburnum-tree or two, and some sycamores which still flourish fresh and fair on Campden Hill--was obscured now by some detestable contrivance in transparent paper imitating stained glass.