In fact she bought many of her new pieces at auction and
with Aileen found it vastly exciting to pore over the advertisements and
then go down to the crowded rooms and bid.
The billiard room behind the former library she left as it was. Her
mother's large bedroom upstairs she turned into a library with bookcases to
the ceiling on three sides, and one of the carved oaken tables against an
expanse of Pompeiian red relieved by one painting (a wedding gift from
Judge Lawton, who believed in patronizing local art) that had despoiled a
desert of its gorgeous yellow sunrise.
The carpet and curtains were red without pattern. The coal grate had been
removed and a fireplace built for logs. It was to be her own den for long
rainy winter afternoons, or the cold and foggy days of summer when she
remained in the city.
The dining-room was also given a hardwood floor and a Japanese red and gold
wall paper as a compliment to her martial ancestors; but as the sideboards
were built into the wails end could be replaced only at great cost;
they remained as a brooding reminder of the solid sixties, and no doubt
exchanged resentful reminiscences at night with the chairs which had been
merely recovered.
As a matter of course modern bathtubs were installed and gas replaced by
electricity.
All this made a "hole" in Alexina's bonds, the wedding-present of her
brothers, but Mortimer offered no objection, knowing as he did that to
achieve his ambition of being master of a house to which fashionable people
would come as a matter of course the outlay was imperative.
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