CHAPTER III

"It is the only set of the kind I ever met with in which you are
neither led nor driven, but actually fall, and that imperceptibly
into literary topics; and I attribute it to this, that in that house
literature is not a treat for company upon invitation days, but is
actually the daily bread of the family."--Written of Maria
Edgeworth's home.


Pamela Reston stood in Bella Bathgate's parlour and surveyed it
disconsolately.

It was papered in a trying shade of terra-cotta and the walls were
embellished by enlarged photographs of the Bathgate family--decent,
well-living people, but plain-headed to a degree. Linoleum covered the
floor. A round table with a red-and-green cloth occupied the middle of
the room, and two arm-chairs and six small chairs stood about stiffly
like sentinels. Pamela had tried them all and found each one more
unyielding than the next. The mantelshelf, painted to look like some
uncommon kind of marble, supported two tall glass jars bright blue and
adorned with white raised flowers, which contained bunches of dried
grasses ("silver shekels" Miss Bathgate called them), rather dusty and
tired-looking. A mahogany sideboard stood against one wall and was
heavily laden with vases and photographs. Hard lace curtains tinted a
deep cream shaded the bow-window.