A table was rooted in the middle, and seats were stuck to the sides.

Happily the tropical suns had bleached the tapestries to a faded blue-green colour, and the mirror with its frame of shells, the work of the steward's love, when the time hung heavy in the southern seas, was quaint rather than ugly.

Twisted shells with red lips like unicorn's horns ornamented the mantelpiece, which was draped by a pall of purple plush from which depended a certain number of balls.

Two windows opened on to the deck, and the light beating through them when the ship was roasted on the Amazons had turned the prints on the opposite wall to a faint yellow colour, so that "The Coliseum" was scarcely to be distinguished from Queen Alexandra playing with her Spaniels.

A pair of wicker arm-chairs by the fireside invited one to warm one's hands at a grate full of gilt shavings; a great lamp swung above the table--the kind of lamp which makes the light of civilisation across dark fields to one walking in the country.
"It's odd that every one should be an old friend of Mr.Pepper's," Rachel started nervously, for the situation was difficult, the room cold, and Helen curiously silent.
"I suppose you take him for granted ?" said her aunt.
"He's like this," said Rachel, lighting on a fossilised fish in a basin, and displaying it.
"I expect you're too severe," Helen remarked.
Rachel immediately tried to qualify what she had said against her belief.
"I don't really know him," she said, and took refuge in facts, believing that elderly people really like them better than feelings.