They lived in the Nineties, between Broadway and Riverside Drive; a few blocks from the Winslow house in distance, but one generation away in the matter of decoration. The apartment-house itself was comparatively old-fashioned, with an intermittent elevator run by an intermittent negro youth who gave most of his time to the telephone switchboard and mysterious duties in the basement; also with a down-stairs hall that was narrow and carpeted and lined with offensively dark wood. But they could see the Hudson from their living-room on the sixth floor at the back of the house (the agent assured them that probably not till the end of time would there be anything but low, private houses between them and the river); they were not haunted by Aunt Emma Truegate Winslow; and Ruth, who had long been oppressed by late-Victorian bric-à-brac and American Louis XVth furniture, so successfully adopted Elimination as the key-note that there was not one piece of furniture bought for the purpose of indicating that Mr. and Mrs. Carl Ericson were well-to-do. She dared to tell friends who before the wedding inquired what she wanted, that checks were welcome, and need not be monogrammed. Even Aunt Emma had been willing to send a check, provided they were properly married in St. George's Church. Consequently their six rooms showed a remarkable absence of such usual wedding presents as prints of the smugly smiling and eupeptic Mona Lisa, three muffin-stands in three degrees of marquetry, three electroliers, four punch-bowls, three sets of almond-dishes, a pair of bird-carvers that did not carve, a bust of Dante in New Art marble, or a de luxe set of De Maupassant translated by a worthy lady with a French lexicon. Instead, they bought what they wanted--rather an impertinent thing to do, but, like most impertinences, thoroughly worth while. Their living-room was their own. Carl's bedroom was white and simple, though spotty with aviation medals and silver cups and monoplanes sketchily rendered in gold, and signed photographs of aviators. Ruth's bedroom was also plain and white and dull Japanese gray, a simple room with that simplicity of hand-embroidery, real lace, and fine linen appreciated by exclamatory women friends.