The Baroness perceived that her entertainer had analyzed material comfort to a sufficiently fine point.
And then he possessed the most delightful chinoiseries--trophies of his sojourn in the Celestial Empire: pagodas of ebony and cabinets of ivory; sculptured monsters, grinning and leering on chimney-pieces, in front of beautifully figured hand-screens; porcelain dinner-sets, gleaming behind the glass doors of mahogany buffets; large screens, in corners, covered with tense silk and embroidered with mandarins and dragons.

These things were scattered all over the house, and they gave Eugenia a pretext for a complete domiciliary visit.

She liked it, she enjoyed it; she thought it a very nice place.

It had a mixture of the homely and the liberal, and though it was almost a museum, the large, little-used rooms were as fresh and clean as a well-kept dairy.

Lizzie Acton told her that she dusted all the pagodas and other curiosities every day with her own hands; and the Baroness answered that she was evidently a household fairy.