surprising that pictures could be hung against them. The pictures, with the exception of one of a ship, were advertisements of whiskies, ales and stouts set in wide gilt frames that had not been cleaned since the house was built. The room was high, but a varnished ceiling and a high varnished dado, to the height of five feet all round it, diminished its liberal proportions. A huge sideboard blatantly displayed enormous pieces of silver that had apparently been designed to show how many bunches of grapes could be moulded to the square foot. Competing for attention were bowls and bottles of cut glass ravined and cliffed like a mountainous land. The two smaller sideboards that held piles of plates and silver for the tables were dwarfed to an undeserved insignificance. It was evident that the linoleum had been intended to match the wall paper. But the intention was better than the result. The eight windows along one side were hung with curtains of lace no longer white, elaborate in pattern and heavy with a design to match the silverware. Stretched in the wash to different lengths they formed an irregular line above the floor, and threatened in places to trail upon it. The room was lit with four gas lamps suspended from the centre.
But hideous as it all was, it was one of the cleanest rooms of its kind. The campaign against flies was vigorous, varied and continuous. Every sugar bowl and milk jug and butter cooler and bread board was protected with circles of netting hung round the border with heavy blue beads. The table-cloths were changed twice a week and the floor washed daily.
To Valerie this was ugliness carried to the point of humour. And then it was inevitable. She could not change it. And she had as extraordinary a patience with disagreeable facts as she had extraordinary an impatience with disagreeable ideas.
