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Longstreet gave us last night?’
‘It was so-so.’
‘I thought it was fine—especially the Chopin.’
‘I thought it was so-so.’
‘When are you going to play for us yourself?’
She shrugged her shoulders, as pleased at this question as
she had been for several years.
‘Some time. But I only play so-so.’
They knew that she did not play at all—she had had two
sisters who were brilliant musicians, but she had never been
able to learn the notes when they had been young together.
From the workshop Dick went to visit the Eglantine
and the Beeches. Exteriorly these houses were as cheerful
as the others; Nicole had designed the decoration and the
furniture on a necessary base of concealed grills and bars
and immovable furniture. She had worked with so much
imagination—the inventive quality, which she lacked, being
supplied by the problem itself—that no instructed visitor
would have dreamed that the light, graceful filagree work at
a window was a strong, unyielding end of a tether, that the
pieces reflecting modern tubular tendencies were stancher
than the massive creations of the Edwardians—even the
flowers lay in iron fingers and every casual ornament and
fixture was as necessary as a girder in a skyscraper. Her
tireless eyes had made each room yield up its greatest use-
fulness. Complimented, she referred to herself brusquely as
a master plumber.
For those whose compasses were not depolarized there
seemed many odd things in these houses. Doctor Diver was

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