Personally she thought it ugly, for all its grandeur; changed
wholly for the worse. Nor did time ever reconcile her to the upper
storey. Domestic worries bred from it: the servant went off in a huff
because of the stairs; they were at once obliged to double their staff.
To cap it all, with its flat front unbroken by bay or porch, the house
looked like no other in the town. Now, instead of passing admiring
remarks, people stood stock-still before the gate to laugh at its droll
appearance.
Yet, she would gladly have made the best of this, had Richard been the
happier for it. He was not--or only for the briefest of intervals. Then
his restlessness broke out afresh.
There came days when nothing suited him; not his fine consulting room,
or the improved furnishings of the house, or even her cookery of which
he had once been so fond. He grew dainty to a degree; she searched her
cookery-book for piquant recipes. Next he fell to imagining it was
unhealthy to sleep on feathers, and went to the expense of having a hard
horsehair mattress made to fit the bed. Accustomed to the softest down,
he naturally tossed and turned all night long, and rose in the morning
declaring he felt as though he had been beaten with sticks. The mattress
was stowed away in a lean-to behind the kitchen, and there it remained.
It was not alone. Mary sometimes stood and considered, with a rueful
eye, the many discarded objects that bore it company. Richard--oddly
enough he was ever able to poke fun at himself--had christened this
outhouse "the cemetery of dead fads.
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