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"Bushwa," said George quietly. And then he surprised me. The glance he gave Grace was affectionate and possessive.

"It is a dull little dump, I guess," said Anne gloomily, after the McClellans had left.

"Oh, listen—it’s a swell house."

"I guess. But it needs so much done to it. I didn’t realize. Golly, their place must be something. They’ve been in it for five years, she said. You can imagine what she could do to a place in five years—everything right, right down to the last nailhead."

"It isn’t much from the outside. Anyway, Anne, this isn’t like you."

She shook her head, as though to wake herself up. "It isn’t, is it? Never in my life have I had the slightest interest in keeping up with the neighbors. But there’s something about that woman."

"To hell with her! Let’s throw in our lot with the Jenkinses."

Anne laughed. Grace’s spell was wearing off. "Are you mad? Be friends with those two-chair people, those quitters?"

"Well, we’d make our friendship contingent on their getting a new couch to go with the chairs."

"And not any couch, but the right couch."

"If they want to be friends of ours, they mustn’t be afraid of color, and they’d better build from the carpet."

"That goes without saying," said Anne crisply.

But it was a long time before we found leisure for more than a nod at the Jenkinses. Grace McClellan spent most of her waking hours at our house. Almost every morning, as I was leaving for work, she would stagger into our house under a load of home magazines and insist that Anne pore over them with her in search of just the right solutions for our particular problem house.

"They must be awfully rich," Anne said at dinner one night.

"I don’t think so," I said. "George has a little leather-goods store that you hardly ever see anybody in."

"Well, then every cent must go into the house."

"That I can believe. But what makes you think they’re rich?"

"To hear that woman talk, you’d think money was nothing! Without batting an eyelash, she talks about ten-dollar-a-yard floor-to-ceiling draperies, says fixing up the kitchen shouldn’t cost more than a lousy fifteen hundred dollars—without the fieldstone fireplace, of course."

"What’s a kitchen without a fieldstone fireplace?"

"And a circular couch."

"Isn’t there some way you can keep her away, Anne? She’s wearing you out. Can’t you just tell her you’re too busy to see her?"

"I haven’t the heart, she’s so kind and friendly and lonely," said Anne helplessly. "Besides, there’s no getting through to her. She doesn’t hear what I say. Her head is just crammed full of blueprints, cloth, furniture, wallpaper, and paint."

"Change the subject."

"Change the course of the Mississippi! Talk about politics, and she talks about remodeling the White House; talk about dogs, and she talks about doghouses."

The telephone rang, and I answered it. It was Grace McClellan. "Yes, Grace?"

"You’re in the office-furniture business, aren’t you?"

"That’s right."

"Do you ever get old filing cabinets in trade?"

"Yes. I don’t like to, but sometimes I have to take them."

"Could you let me have one?"

I thought a minute. I had an old wooden wreck I was about to haul to the dump. I told her about it.

"Oh, that’ll be divine! There’s an article in last month’s Better House about what to do with old filing cabinets. You can make them just darling by wallpapering them, then putting a coat of clear shellac over the paper. Can’t you just see it?"

"Yep. Darling, all right. I’ll bring it out tomorrow night."

"That’s awfully nice of you. I wonder if you and Anne couldn’t drop in for a drink then."

I accepted and hung up. "Well, the time has come," I said. "Marie Antoinette has finally invited us to have a look at Versailles. "

"I’m afraid," Anne said. "It’s going to make our home look so sad."

"There’s more to life than decorating."

"I know, I know. I just wish you’d stay home in the daytime and keep telling me that while she’s here."

The next evening, I drove the pickup truck home instead of my car, so I could deliver the old filing cabinet to Grace. Anne was already inside the