Books there were in lavish abundance, but there were also
pictures and flowers and a singing-bird or two, and an utter absence of
that severe attention to business details which characterizes most rooms
so named. Little prettinesses, which Mr. Roberts smilingly admitted did
not belong to a library, were yet established there, with an air of having
come to stay. "We will call it the library for convenience," the master
of the house said, "and then we will put into it whatever we please. It
shall be a conservatory, and a sewing-room and a lounging-room and
anything else that you and I choose to make it." And Mrs. Roberts
gleefully assented, and gave free rein to her pretty tastes. Flossy
Shipley had been wont to be much trammelled with the ways in
which "they" did everything; but Mrs. Evan Roberts was learning that,
in unimportant matters at least, they had a right to be a law unto
themselves. Perhaps it helped her, to be aware that a large class of
people were all ready to quote "Mrs. Evan Roberts" as authority on
almost any point of taste.
On the evening in question Mr. Roberts, in dressing-gown and slippers,
had drawn his lounging-chair to the drop-light, preparatory to a
half-hour of reading aloud. But it transpired that there was something
preparatory to that, or at least that must take the precedence.
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