After four years of "expansion" there, they had begun to feel
cramped; and a year after Marian inherited the house Howard had progressed
to the mental, the moral, the financial state where it seemed natural,
logical, practically necessary that they should set up a real New York
"establishment."
"Isn't this just the house for us?" she said. "I hate huge, big houses.
Like you, I think the taste of the occupants should be everywhere. Now this
house is just big enough. You don't know how wonderful it would be."
"Oh, yes, I do," he laughed, "and you must try it." He was as enthusiastic
as she.
In the late autumn the house was ready; and there was not a more artistic
interior in New York. It was not so much the result of great expense as of
intelligence and taste. It was an expression of an individuality--a
revelation of a woman's beautiful mind, inspired by love.
"At last I have something to interest, to occupy me," she said. "This is
our very own, through and through our own. It will be such a pleasure to me
to keep it always like this."
"You--degenerated into a household drudge," he mocked. "Why, you used to
laugh at me when I held up a wife who was a good housekeeper as one of my
ideals."
"Did I?" she answered. "Well, as you would say, see what I've come to
through living with--a member of the working-classes.
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