began studying it. It asked questions on every turn, and seemed
surprised when they were answered. The house was delightfully rambling,
with a tiny entrance hall, and narrow stairs, and sudden up and down
steps from one room to another like the old, old house one associates
with far-away places and old times.

The little entrance hall was worse than a question, it was a problem, but
I finally solved it. The floor was paved with little hexagon-shaped tiles
of a wonderful old red. A door made of little square panes of mirrors was
placed where it would deceive the old hall into thinking itself a spacious
thing. The walls were covered with a green-and-white-stripe wall-paper
that looked as old as Rip Van Winkle. This is the same ribbon-grass paper
that I afterward used in the Colony Club hallway. The woodwork was painted
a soft gray-green. Finally, I had my collection of faded French costume
prints set flat against the top of the wall as a frieze. The hall was so
very narrow that as you went up stairs you could actually examine the old
prints in detail. Another little thing: I covered the handrail of the
stairs with a soft gray-green velvet of the same tone as the woodwork, and
the effect was so very good and the touch of it so very nice that many of
my friends straightway adopted the idea.

But I am placing the cart before the horse! I should talk of the shell
of the house before the contents, shouldn't I? It is hard to talk of
this particular house as a thing apart from its furnishings, however,
for every bit of paneling, every lighting-fixture, the placing of each
mirror, was worked out so that the shell of the house and its
furnishings might be in perfect harmony.

The drawing-room and dining-room occupied the first floor of the house.
The drawing-room was a long, narrow room with cream woodwork and walls.