Page:The lady or the tiger and other stories, Stockton (Scribner's 1897 ed).djvu/66

56 was sorry to give up this place for his bow, for it was convenient and appropriate; and for an instant he thought that it might remain, if the front door could be kept shut, and visitors admitted through a little side door, which the family generally used, and which was almost as convenient as the other,—except, indeed, on wash-days, when a wet sheet or some article of wearing apparel was apt to be hung in front of it. But, although wash-day occurred but once a week, and although it was comparatively easy, after a little practice, to bob under a high-propped sheet, Pepton's heart was too kind to allow his mind to dwell upon this plan. So he drew the nails from the wall of the hall, and put them up in various places about the house. His own room had to be aired a great deal in all weathers, and so that would not do at all. The wall above the kitchen fire-place would be a good location, for the chimney was nearly always warm; but Pepton could not bring himself to keep his bow in the kitchen: there would be nothing æsthetic about such a disposition of it; and, besides, the girl might be tempted to string and bend it. The old ladies really did not want it in the parlor, for its length and its green baize cover would make it an encroaching and unbecoming neighbor to the little engravings and the big samplers, the picture-frames of acorns and pine-cones, the fancifully patterned ornaments of clean wheat-straw, and all the quaint adornments which had hung upon those walls for so many years. But they did not say so. If it had been necessary, to make room for the bow, they would have taken down the