Page:Saxe Holm's Stories, Series Two.djvu/269

Rh people who will see what it is, and they will be the better for it. It only hurts and hardens the others to tell them they ought to like it. And, as for explaining why a thing is beautiful, you can't. There is n't any why."

The room was indeed beautiful. Across three of the corners had been fitted book-shelves with doors of mahogany. The wood had been brought to the town by an old sea captain. He had brought it from Brazil, and it had lain a quarter of a century, waiting for him to grow rich enough to build a house. Before that time came he died, and the mahogany boards went to auction, with old sea chests and other rubbish. Dusty and unplaned as they were, the rich, dark wine-colored planks caught Ally's eye, and she had bought them herself, to the Dominie's great amusement. The doors were finished in long, narrow panels with a single molding. In the centre of each was framed one of Ally's flower-pieces; in one, purple pansies on white ground; in another, pale, shadowy white foxglove blossoms, in a cream-colored jar on a dark claret ground; and in the third, amber and green and dark-red grasses on a light-blue ground. In the fourth corner stood the abutilon-trees, now grown to the ceiling, and branching wide like lilac bushes. A mantel-shelf and several brackets had been cut simply of the same mahogany, and along their front edges were set, like tiles, bands of the same flower embroidery, or of fantastic patterns like mosaics,