Mrs. Engels Read Online Free Page A

in young hearts.)
    In decorating the house, what she’s tried to do, she said, is dull the pristine down and make the place appear longer stood. I said I hope this doesn’t mean there’ll be dirt and dust round the place, for I don’t allow it. She said it isn’t a question of cleanliness but of heritage, for olden things can be clean without being shiny. I said what would I be wanting with heritage? All I need is a couple of chairs that stand upright. She said it isn’t hard to give the idea of it, even in recent and modest houses, by buying the necessaries at auctions, such as movables of no modern date and art that’s been handled and weathered—and chipped, I see now—and by scattering it all about so that two new things don’t rub against each other and make a glare.
    â€œEnding the tyranny of novelty,” is what she called it.
    â€œSpending other people’s brass,” is what I call it, but only to myself. And it’s unkind even to think it, for I wouldn’t have been able to do it—the ridding, the arranging, the fixing up—without her.
    She’s thought of everything. She’s had the right fringe put on the draping, and the right frills put on the fringe. The few bits we sent down ourselves, she’s had cushioned over. She’s had the stores stocked. She’s had calling cards made; there they are stacked on the hall table. Everything: first to last, start to end.
    â€œWe went a finger over budget,” she said. “But I believe quality speaks for itself.”
    And the rooms do indeed speak. They speak dark and solemn. For in buying the movables—and by all accounts she bid like a madbody after most of it—she thought not about what was handsome but about what was suitable to Frederick’s position. And seeing them now, these hulks of bookcases and cabinets and desks and tables, I find myself wondering has she mistaken him, all along, for a priest.
    â€œAre you thinking what I’m thinking, Frederick?” I says, as a way of cheering him.
    But there’s no humor to be had from him. He’s gone like a brick. Closed like a door. He shrugs and disappears upstairs. I follow him up and find him on the first landing, glowering down at his feet.
    â€œLizzie, I wish you to favor me by showing me which room you would like to have as your boudoir. I’d rather have these matters decided for me.”
    â€œAll right,” I says, hardening myself now. “If that’s how you want it.”
    Jenny has put a cabinet and a toilette table in the large room on the first floor, so she probable expects me to claim that one, on account of its size and distance from the road. As it happens, I decide to leave that one to Frederick—it’s closer to his study, after all—and I choose instead the smaller one on the top floor. Here I’ll have to share a landing with the maids, and it means an extra flight of steps up and down, and I know people will think I picked it out of a fear of taking too much. But the truth is, I much prefer it. They’ve thought to put a fireplace all the way up here. And there’s a nice washstand and a hip bath, and the flowers on the wall are so brilliant and colorful they look fresh picked. And the bed: the bed has golden posts and an eiderdown quilt, and the way it’s sitting in the light, it’s like God shining down over it. I sit on it and know immediate that it’s mine. “That’s it with the moving,” it makes me think. “We’ll not budge from here. This is the place that’ll see me out. This is the bed that on my last day I won’t get up from.”
    â€œThis is the one I want,” I says.
    â€œFine,” he says, and goes to look out the little window that gives over garden and the roofs of the other houses.
    There’s a terrible quiet. His back is a wall blocking out the lovely bit of sun, and the shiver in his