There
would be nothing esthetic 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 pencilled
profiles of their grandfather, their grandmother, and their
father when a little boy, which hung in a row over the
mantelpiece.
However, Pepton did not ask this sacrifice. In the summer
evenings the parlor windows must be open. The dining-room was
really very little used in the evening, except when Miss Maria
had stockings to darn, and then she always sat in that apartment,
and of course she had the windows open. But Miss Maria was very
willing to bring her work into the parlor,--it was foolish,
anyway, to have a feeling about darning stockings before
chance company,--and then the dining-room could be kept shut up
after tea. So into the wall of that neat little room Pepton
drove his worsted-covered nails, and on them carefully laid his
bow. All the next day Miss Martha and Miss Maria went about the
house, covering the nail-holes he had made with bits of wall-
paper, carefully snipped out to fit the patterns, and pasted on
so neatly that no one would have suspected they were there.
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