Michael himself from sheer detestation of the surroundings under which he had grown to manhood favoured the uncovered, the naked wood or stone or slate, the bare floor, the wooden settee or cane-bottomed chair, the massive side-board, the bare mantelpiece and distempered wall.  On the whole, their house in Portland Place satisfied tolerably well the advanced taste in domestic scenery of 1901.  But your eye was caught at once by the additions made by Mrs. Rossiter.  Linda conceived it was her womanly mission to lighten the severity of Michael’s choice in furniture and decorations.  She introduced rickety and expensive screens that were easily knocked over; photographs in frames which toppled at a breath; covers on every flat surface that could be covered—­occasional tables, tops of grand pianos.  If she did not put frills round piano legs, she placed tasselled poufs about the drawing-room that every short-sighted visitor fell over, and used large bows of slightly discoloured ribbon to mask unneeded brackets.  In the reception rooms food-bestrewn parrot stands were left where they ought never to be seen; and there were gilt-wired parrot cages; baskets for the pugs lined with soiled shawls; absurd ornaments, china cats with exaggerated necks, alabaster figures of stereotyped female beauty and flowerpot stands of ornate bamboo.  She loved portieres, and she would fain have mitigated the bareness of the panelled or distempered walls; only that here her husband was firm.  She unconsciously mocked the few well-chosen, well-placed pictures on the walls (which she itched to cover with a “flock” paper) by placing in the same room on bamboo easels that matched the be-ribboned flower-stands pastel, crayon, or gouache studies of the worst possible taste.

Michael’s library alone was free from her improvements, though it was sometimes littered with her work-bags or her work.  She had long ago developed the dreadful mistake that it “helped” Michael at his work if she brought hers (perfectly futile as a rule) there too.  “I just sit silently in his room, my dear, and stitch or knit something for poor people in Marrybone—­I’m told you mayn’t say Mary-le-bone.  I feel it helps Michael to know I’m there, but of course I don’t interrupt him at his work.”

As a matter of fact she did, confoundedly.  But fortunately she soon grew sleepy or restless.  She would yawn, as she believed “prettily,” but certainly noisily; or she would wonder “how time was going,” and of course her twenty-guinea watch never went, or if it was going was seldom within one hour of the actual time.  Or she would sneeze six times in succession—­little cat-like sneezes that were infinitely disturbing to a brain on the point of grasping the solution of a problem.  Throughout the winter months she had a little cough.  Oh no, you needn’t think I’m preparing the way for decease through phthisis—­it was one of those “kiffy” coughs due in the main to acidity—­too many sweet things