A ply carpet covered the floor, a cheap piano stood across one corner of the room, and a greenish sofa across another.

The mantelpiece was of white marble with gray spots; on one side of it stood an Alaskan "grass basket" full of photographs, and on the other an inverted section of a sewer-pipe painted with daisies and full of gilded cat-tails tied with a blue ribbon.

Near the piano straddled a huge easel of imitation brass up-holding the crayon picture of Ida's baby sister enlarged from a photograph.

Across one corner of this picture was a yellow "drape." There were a great many of these "drapes" all about the room, hanging over the corners of the chairs, upon an edge of the mantelpiece, and even twisted about the chandelier.
In the exact middle of the mantelpiece itself was the clock, one of the chief ornaments of the room, almost the first thing one saw upon entering; it was a round-faced timepiece perversely set in one corner of an immense red plush palette; the palette itself was tilted to one side, and was upheld by an easel of twisted brass wire.

Out of the thumb-hole stuck half a dozen brushes wired together in a round bunch and covered with gilt paint.