Page:Old New York 2 The Old Maid.djvu/66

 who clung to a heavy mid-day meal and high tea.

“There’s nothing I hate like narrow-mindedness. Let people eat when they like, for all I care: it’s their narrow-mindedness that I can’t stand.”

Delia was thinking of this as she sat in the drawing-room (her mother would have called it the parlour) waiting for her husband’s return. She had just had time to smooth her glossy braids, and slip on the black-and-white striped moire with cherry pipings which was his favourite dress. The drawing-room, with its Nottingham lace curtains looped back under florid gilt cornices, its marble centre-table on a carved rosewood foot, and its old-fashioned mahogany armchairs covered with one of the new French silk damasks in a tart shade of apple-green, was one for any young wife to be proud of. The [ 58 ]