who sometimes came in for an informal chat with Mother. I ran out and welcomed her most cordially, eager to ask her advice.
“The piano is not in the way,” she said. “These rooms are large enough as they are, even if everyone comes. You won’t have to do a thing except put in more chairs. “But”—and she looked around the big double parlours with the lace-curtained windows and the long mirror with gilded frame—“the rooms do look empty with the centre table taken out. Why don’t you scatter about some of those Japanese trinkets that you have upstairs? They would add wonderfully to the general effect.”
As soon as she was gone I brought down several Japanese things and placed them here and there about the room. Then I arranged a few iris blossoms in a vase according to the graceful, but rigid, rules of Japanese flower arrangement, and stepped back to view the effect.
From the flowers my eyes went slowly around the room. I was disappointed. What was wrong? The Japanese articles were each one of rare workmanship, and the vase of blossoms was beautiful; but for some mysterious reason Mother’s parlours never before had looked so unattractive. Suddenly my eye fell on a little bronze incense burner, which had been given me in my childhood, by one of the Toda children, for my doll festival set. It looked oddly out of place on top of the American bookcase; and when, lifting my eyes, I saw above it an etching of a dancing faun, I almost hysterically snatched it away. With lightning swiftness my mind flew to the cool, light rooms of my Nagaoka home—to the few ornaments, each in the place designed for it—and I began to understand. My Japanese treasures would be beautiful in their proper surroundings, but here they were neither beautiful themselves, nor did they add to the attractiveness of our stately
