Page:Bedroom and Boudoir.djvu/33

18 ourselves that we have grown beyond the days of enormous boughs and branches of exaggerated leaves and blossoms daubed on a crude ground, but have we escaped from the dominion of patterns, more minute it is true, but quite as much outside the pale of good taste? What is to be said in defence of a design which, when its colours are fresh, is so shaded as to represent some billowy and uneven surface, fastened at intervals by yellow nails? or spots of white flowers or stars on a grass-green ground? The only carpet of that sort of white and green which I ever liked had tiny sprays of white heather on a soft green ground, in the miniature drawing-room of a Scotch shooting-box. There, it was so appropriate, so thoroughly in keeping with even the view out of the windows, with the heathery chintz, the roe-deer's heads on the panels of the wall, that it looked better on the floor than anything else could possibly have done. Morris has Kidderminster carpets for bedrooms, in pale pink, buff, and blue, &c., which are simply perfect in harmony of colour and design.

People who consider themselves good managers are very apt to turn the half worn-out drawing-room carpet into one of the bedrooms, but this is not a good plan, for it seldom matches the draperies, and is also apt to become frowsy and