These columns, pine under the paint, were bruised and chipped at the base; one of them showed a crack that threatened to become a split; the "hard-wood" floor had become uneven; and in a corner the walls apparently failed of solidity, where the wall-paper had declined to accompany some staggerings of the plaster beneath it.
The furniture was in great part an accumulation begun with the wedding gifts; though some of it was older, two large patent rocking-chairs and a footstool having belonged to Mrs.Adams's mother in the days of hard brown plush and veneer.

For decoration there were pictures and vases.
Mrs.Adams had always been fond of vases, she said, and every year her husband's Christmas present to her was a vase of one sort or another--whatever the clerk showed him, marked at about twelve or fourteen dollars.

The pictures were some of them etchings framed in gilt: Rheims, Canterbury, schooners grouped against a wharf; and Alice could remember how, in her childhood, her father sometimes pointed out the watery reflections in this last as very fine.

But it was a long time since he had shown interest in such things--"or in anything much," as she thought.
Other pictures were two water-colours in baroque frames; one being the Amalfi monk on a pergola wall, while the second was a yard-wide display of iris blossoms, painted by Alice herself at fourteen, as a birthday gift to her mother.

Alice's glance paused upon it now with no great pride, but showed more approval of an enormous photograph of the Colosseum.