There is to be found no such abomination of shape in the buildings of our ancestors,--not even in the days of George the Second.

But yet the drawing-room of which I speak was ugly, and Alice knew that it was so.

She knew that it was ugly, and she would greatly have liked to banish the green sofa, to have re-papered the wall, and to have hung up curtains with a dash of pink through them.

With the green carpet she would have been contented.

But her father was an extravagant man; and from the day on which she had come of age she had determined that it was her special duty to avoid extravagance.
"It's the ugliest room I ever saw in my life," her father once said to her.
"It is not very pretty," Alice replied.
"I'll go halves with you in the expense of redoing it," said Mr Vavasor.
"Wouldn't that be extravagant, papa?
The things have not been here quite four years yet." Then Mr Vavasor had shrugged his shoulders and said nothing more about it.