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Wax-flowers presuppose delicate fingers and robust patience, but there are still many points of mind and person which they leave vague and problematic; so I must tell you that Miss Linnet had dark ringlets, a sallow complexion, and an amiable disposition.
There was nothing very peculiar about Jane's little sitting-room: just the ordinary English landlady's parlour. You know the type: square table in the middle; bright blue vases on the mantelpiece; chromo-lithograph from the Illustrated London News on the wall; rickety whatnot with glass-shaded wax-flowers in the recess by the window.
Georgie K., still with a white, shocked, inquiring face, extended his hand and took the roll of bills which the doctor gave him. "Come in and take something," said he, and Doctor Gordon and James accepted. They went again into the state parlor on whose shelf were the wax-flowers and the stuffed canary, and they partook of apple-jack. Then Doctor Gordon and James took leave.
There was haircloth furniture, and a mahogany table, with various stains of conviviality upon its polished surface. There was a fire on the hearth, and on the mantel stood some gilded vases and a glass case of wax-flowers, also a stuffed canary under a glass shade, pathetic on his little twig. Doctor Gordon pointed to the flowers and the canary.
Away up in that convenient attic lie the desecrated splendors of the past, scattered in confusion by charitable mice, blue and crimson wax-flowers melt underneath the eaves, all destitute of petals that would not fit on; patchwork quilts and cushions, in silk and satin distractions, just fall short of harmony in the arrangement of their squares and colors; vivid buttercups and daisies mingle with bulky cat-o'-nine-tails, all on canvas covered with paint; blacking-jugs adorned with pictures, embossed and otherwise; moth-eaten Kensington, partly outlined in conventional lilies and conventional stitches; forlorn-looking cats and dogs on half-made rugs and slippers, all, all are there to point out certain very unpleasant morals, referring chiefly to inability and lack of perseverance.
Worm-eaten oak was flanked by mahogany veneer, brocade and tapestry were eked out with horse-hair and green rep, gules and azure from the stained-glass lozenge lattices were reflected in a hundred twinkling, dangling lusters; and you came upon lions rampant in a wilderness of wax-flowers.
A few smutched and faded annuals, half-covered with dust, lay on the centre-table, beside an old-fashioned astral lamp, a cracked porcelain vase of wax-flowers, a yellow satin pincushion embroidered with tarnished gold-lace, and an album of venerable hue filled with hyperbolic apostrophes to the charms of some ancient beauty; which, with the dilapidated window-curtains, the obsolete sideboard, the wooden effigy of a red-faced man with a spyglass under his arm, and the cracked alabaster clock-case on the mantel, all bespoke an impoverished establishment, so devoid of taste that the beautiful and artistic portrait seemed to have found its way there by a miracle.
"This is how I draw now," said Marfinka, handing him a drawing of a bunch of flowers. "Splendid, little sister! Is it done from nature?" "Yes, from nature. I can make wax-flowers, too." "And do you play or sing?" "I play the piano." "And does Veroshka draw and play?" Marfinka shook her head. "Does she like needlework? No? Then is she fond of reading?" "Yes, she reads a great deal.
I do not know what Alice did with the wax-flowers. As for the nine hundred dollars, I appropriated it to laudable purposes. Some of it went for a new silk dress for Alice; the rest I spent for books, and I recall my thrill of delight when I saw ensconced upon my shelves a splendid copy of Audubon's "Birds" with its life-size pictures of turkeys, buzzards, and other fowl done in impossible colors.
State rooms are horrid." "This only wants to be littered down," said Rosamond. "That's my first task in fresh quarters, banishing some things and upsetting the rest, and strewing our own about judiciously. There are the inevitable wax-flowers. I have regular blarney about their being so lovely, that it would just go to my heart to expose them to the boys."
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