ottomans, probably made of old soap-boxes, were all covered with American nankeen of a soft yellowish-brown, with a bordering of blue print.  The window-shades, the table-cover, and the piano-cloth, all repeated the same colors, in the same cheap material.  A simple straw matting was laid over the floor, and, with a few books, a vase of flowers, and one or two prints, the room had a home-like, and even elegant air, that struck us all the more forcibly from its contrast with the usual tawdry, slovenly style of such parlors.

“The means used for getting up this effect were the most inexpensive possible,—­simply the following-out, in cheap material, a law of uniformity and harmony, which always will produce beauty.  In the same manner, I have seen a room furnished, whose effect was really gorgeous in color, where the only materials used were Turkey-red cotton and a simple ingrain carpet of corresponding color.

“Now, you girls have been busy lately in schemes for buying a velvet carpet for the new parlor that is to be, and the only points that have seemed to weigh in the council were that it was velvet, that it was cheaper than velvets usually are, and that it was a genteel pattern.”

“Now, papa,” said Jennie, “what ears you have!  We thought you were reading all the time!”

“I see what you are going to say,” said Marianne.  “You think that we have not once mentioned the consideration which should determine the carpet,—­whether it will harmonize with our other things.  But, you see, papa, we don’t really know what our other things are to be.”  “Yes,” said Jennie, “and Aunt Easygo said it was an unusually good chance to get a velvet carpet.”

“Yet, good as the chance is, it costs just twice as much as an ingrain.”

“Yes, papa, it does.”

“And you are not sure that the effect of it, after you get it down, will be as good as a well-chosen ingrain one.”

“That’s true,” said Marianne, reflectively.

“But, then, papa,” said Jennie, “Aunt Easygo said she never heard of such a bargain; only think, two dollars a yard for a velvet!”

“And why is it two dollars a yard?  Is the man a personal friend, that he wishes to make you a present of a dollar on the yard? or is there some reason why it is undesirable?” said I.

“Well, you know, papa, he said those large patterns were not so salable.”

“To tell the truth,” said Marianne, “I never did like the pattern exactly; as to uniformity of tint, it might match with anything, for there’s every color of the rainbow in it.”

“You see, papa, it’s a gorgeous flower-pattern,” said Jennie.

“Well, Marianne, how many yards of this wonderfully cheap carpet do you want?”

“We want sixty yards for both rooms,” said Jennie, always primed with statistics.

“That will be a hundred and twenty dollars,” I said.

“Yes,” said Jennie; “and we went over the figures together, and thought we could make it out by economizing in other things.  Aunt Easygo said that the carpet was half the battle,—­that it gave the air to everything else.”