The lighting-fixtures are of wood carved in the Adam manner and painted dark blue and gold.  The writing-table has been placed squarely in front of the center window, in which are hung Miss Marbury’s bird cages.  There are a number of old French prints on the wall.  The whole room is quieter in tone than my room, which may be because her chosen color is old-blue, and mine rose-red.

In a small house where only one woman’s tastes have to be considered, a small downstairs sitting-room may take the place of the more personal boudoir, but where there are a number of people in the household a room connecting with the bedroom of the house mistress is more fortunate.  Here she can be as independent as she pleases of the family and the guests who come and go through the other living-rooms of the house.  Here she can have her counsels with her children, or her tradespeople, or her employees, without the distractions of chance interruptions, for this one room should have doors that open and close, doors that are not to be approached without invitation.  The room may be as austere and business-like as a down-town office, or it may be a nest of comfort and luxury primarily planned for relaxation, but it must be so placed that it is a little apart from the noise and flurry of the rest of the house or it has no real reason-for-being.

Whenever it is possible, I believe the man of the house should also have a small sitting-room that corresponds to his wife’s boudoir.  We Americans have made a violent attempt to incorporate a room of this kind in our houses by introducing a “den” or a “study,” but somehow the man of the house is never keen about such a room.  A “den” to him means an airless cubby-hole of a room hung with pseudo-Turkish draperies and papier-mache shields and weapons, and he has a mighty aversion to it.  Who could blame him?  And as for the study, the average man doesn’t want a study when he wants to work; he prefers to work in his office, and he’d like a room of his own big enough to hold all his junk, and he’d like it to have doors and windows and a fireplace.  The so-called study is usually a heavy, cheerless little room that isn’t any good for anything else.  The ideal arrangement would be a room of average size opening from his bedroom, a room that would have little suggestion of business and a great flavor of his hobbies.  His wife’s boudoir must be her office also, but he doesn’t need a house office, unless he be a writer, or a teacher, or some man who works at home.  After all, I think the painters and illustrators are the happiest of all men, because they have to have studios, and their wives generally recognize the fact, and give them a free hand.  The man who has a studio or a workshop all his own is always a popular man.  He has a fascination for his less fortunate friends, who buzz around him in wistful admiration.

XIII

A LIGHT, GAY DINING-ROOM