This she thought of as "the only good thing in the room"; it possessed and bestowed distinction, she felt; and she did not regret having won her struggle to get it hung in its conspicuous place of honour over the mantelpiece.

Formerly that place had been held for years by a steel-engraving, an accurate representation of the Suspension Bridge at Niagara Falls.

It was almost as large as its successor, the "Colosseum," and it had been presented to Mr.Adams by colleagues in his department at Lamb and Company's.

Adams had shown some feeling when Alice began to urge its removal to obscurity in the "upstairs hall"; he even resisted for several days after she had the "Colosseum" charged to him, framed in oak, and sent to the house.

She cheered him up, of course, when he gave way; and her heart never misgave her that there might be a doubt which of the two pictures was the more dismaying.
Over the pictures, the vases, the old brown plush rocking-chairs and the stool, over the three gilt chairs, over the new chintz-covered easy chair and the gray velure sofa--over everything everywhere, was the familiar coating of smoke grime.