Page:Stella Dallas, a novel (IA stelladallasnove00prou).pdf/211

Rh yellow-flowered cretonne for only ninety-eight cents a yard as effective as linen at six-fifty. But the hangings did not make the room right. Laurel felt convinced at last that the room would never be right.

One afternoon, when her mother was out shopping, she tried to give it just a little of the same look that Mrs. Morrison gave her rooms. But it was hopeless. Afterwards she wandered through the apartment gazing upon all its details with despairing eyes.

The kitchenette with its piled-up breakfast and dinner dishes, waiting for their nightly washing (Stella kept no maid, and she had her own way of keeping house), suggested to Laurel little of the homeyness of Mrs. Morrison's big roomy kitchen, basking in the afternoon warmth of a great black stove, the table spread with a bright red cloth, and a cheerful, broad-faced clock ticking lazily on the mantel.

The Boston apartment was very little like the "home all of our own" of Laurel's dreams. There was no garden. There was no lawn. There was no front door with a knocker, and a single bell. The only difference, as far as Laurel could see, between an apartment and a hotel was that in an apartment you ate your meals in your own rooms instead of downstairs, and it wasn't against the rules to use the gas for cooking.

didn't like Boston. She didn't know of a single winding river, over which to glide upon skates, in and out among alder bushes; nor of a