negro youth who gave most of his time to the telephone
switchboard and mysterious duties in the basement; also with a
down-stairs hall that was narrow and carpeted and lined with
offensively dark wood. But they could see the Hudson from their
living-room on the sixth floor at the back of the house (the agent
assured them that probably not till the end of time would there be
anything but low, private houses between them and the river); they
were not haunted by Aunt Emma Truegate Winslow; and Ruth, who had long
been oppressed by late-Victorian bric-a-brac and American Louis XVth
furniture, so successfully adopted Elimination as the key-note that
there was not one piece of furniture bought for the purpose of
indicating that Mr. and Mrs. Carl Ericson were well-to-do.

She dared to tell friends who before the wedding inquired what she
wanted, that checks were welcome, and need not be monogrammed. Even
Aunt Emma had been willing to send a check, provided they were
properly married in St. George's Church. Consequently their six rooms
showed a remarkable absence of such usual wedding presents as prints
of the smugly smiling and eupeptic Mona Lisa, three muffin-stands in
three degrees of marquetry, three electroliers, four punch-bowls,
three sets of almond-dishes, a pair of bird-carvers that did not
carve, a bust of Dante in New Art marble, or a de luxe set of De
Maupassant translated by a worthy lady with a French lexicon. Instead,
they bought what they wanted--rather an impertinent thing to do, but,
like most impertinences, thoroughly worth while. Their living-room was
their own. Carl's bedroom was white and simple, though spotty with
aviation medals and silver cups and monoplanes sketchily rendered in
gold, and signed photographs of aviators. Ruth's bedroom was also
plain and white and dull Japanese gray, a simple room with that
simplicity of hand-embroidery, real lace, and fine linen appreciated
by exclamatory women friends.

She taught Carl to say "dahg" instead of "dawg" for "dog"; "wawta"
instead of "wotter" for "water." Whether she was more correct in her
pronunciation or not does not matter; New York said "dahg," and it
amused him just then to be very Eastern. She taught him the theory of
house-lighting. Carl had no fanatical objection to unshaded
incandescent bulbs glaring from the ceiling. But he came to like the
shaded electric lamps which Ruth installed in the living-room. When
she introduced four candles as sole