and master beware who takes it upon himself to do the
furnishing also stealthily and of his own accord. I will confess that
it did occur to me at first to put through the whole business at one
fell swoop--house, wall-papers, dados, chandeliers, carpets, and
curtains. I even went so far as to cross the street one day with the
intention of asking Poultney Briggs, who makes a business of letting
people know what they ought to like in the line of interior decoration,
to name his price to complete the job. But my courage failed me at the
last minute, for I had a presentiment that Josephine would be
disappointed if I did. You see I know her pretty well after all these
years.

"I should never have forgiven you, Fred--never!" said my better-half,
emphatically, when I told her how near I had come to the crucial act.
"I should have hated everything. Besides, no one nowadays thinks
anything of Poultney Briggs as a decorator. He is terribly behind the
times."

I accepted this reproof and the accompanying verdict with becoming
meekness. I remember that when we first went to house-keeping Poultney
Briggs was in the van of artistic progress, and that no one was to be
mentioned in the same breath with him; yet now, apparently, he was of
the sere-and-yellow-leaf order, professionally speaking. And I was old
fogy enough not to have been aware of it. Clearly, I was not fit to be
entrusted with the selection of even a door-mat, to say nothing of the
wall-papers and carpets. It was with a thankful heart over my
foresight that I relinquished to Josephine the whole task of
furnishing, with the sole reservation that I should have my say about
the wine-cellar. My only revenge, a miserable one forsooth, was that
she resembled a skeleton three months later; a pale, pitiful bag of
bones, though proud and radiant withal. Had it not been for that
prediction that her life was to be lengthened, I should have felt
anxious. What a marvellous creation a woman is, to be sure! Man and
philosopher as I am, my impulse would have been to consign the contents
of the garret to the auctioneer or the ash-man, and to retain most of
the least-used furniture and upholstery to eke out our new splendor.
But Josephine's method was distinctly opposite. She was critical of
nearly everything respectable-looking in the old house; on the other
hand, there was scarcely anything in the attic or lumber-room, where
our useless things were stored, which did not