ngel is
always appreciative, and, moreover, is never too absorbed or too tired
to express it fluently. That's one of the things which make it such a
pleasure to plan his comfort.

"Doesn't it sound winter evening-y and snowy outside?" I said.

"I can hear the wind howling," said the Angel. "What's the next item?"

"Well, now we come to a theory. Of course I have had no more
experience than you in buying furniture, but it stands to reason that
some of the things we buy now will be with us at death. Some furniture
stays by you like a murder. For instance, a dining-room table. I have
known some very rich people in my life, Aubrey, but I have seldom seen
any who grew rich gradually who had had the moral courage to discard a
dining-room table if it were even decently good. Have you ever thought
about that?"

"I can't say that I have, but it is fraught with possibility. 'The
Ethics of Household Furniture' would make good reading."

"Well, haven't you," I persisted, "in all seriousness, haven't you seen
some very handsome modern dining-rooms marred by a dinner-table too
good to throw away, which you were convinced the family had begun
housekeeping with?"

"Yes, I have!" cried Aubrey. "You are right, I have. I thought you
were jesting at first."

"Well, I am, sort of half-way. But the sort of dinner-table I want to
buy is no joke. It is one which will grace an apartment or a palace.
We can be proud of it even when we are rich. Yet it is not showy, or
one which will be too screamingly prominent. It is of carved oak with
the value all in the carving. It costs--" Here I whispered the price,
for to us it was almost a crime to think of it.

The Angel looked sober when my whisper reached him. But he did not
commit himself. I eyed him anxiously.

"But to make up for that outlay, here is the way I have planned the
rest of the house. Let's have no drawing-room."

"No drawing-room? Then where will you receive guests?"

"The room will be there, and people may come into it and sit down, but
it will not be familiar ground to strangers. They will find themselves
in a cheerful room with soothing walls and comfortable chairs. There
will be books and magazines. It will not be a library, for quantities
of bookcases discourage the frivolous. It will have no gilt chairs,
because big men always want to sit in them. It will have no lace
curtains, because I hate them. The piano will be there and most of our
wed