She unconsciously mocked the few well-chosen, well-placed pictures on the walls (which she itched to cover with a "flock" paper) by placing in the same room on bamboo easels that matched the be-ribboned flower-stands pastel, crayon, or _gouache_ studies of the worst possible taste.
Michael's library alone was free from her improvements, though it was sometimes littered with her work-bags or her work.

She had long ago developed the dreadful mistake that it "helped" Michael at his work if she brought hers (perfectly futile as a rule) there too.

"I just sit silently in his room, my dear, and stitch or knit something for poor people in Marrybone--I'm told you mayn't say Mary-le-bone.
I feel it _helps_ Michael to know I'm there, but of course I don't interrupt him at his _work_." As a matter of fact she did, confoundedly.

But fortunately she soon grew sleepy or restless.

She would yawn, as she believed "prettily," but certainly noisily; or she would wonder "how time was going," and of course her twenty-guinea watch never went, or if it was going was seldom within one hour of the actual time.