It was a beautiful room, and a part of a beautiful house, for the
American doctor and his wife, deciding to make the English capital their
home, had searched and waited patiently until in Camden Hill Road they
had discovered a house possessed of just the irresistible combination of
bigness and coziness, beauty and simplicity, for which they had hoped.
In the soft tones of the rugs, the plain and comfortable chairs, the
warm glow of a lamp shade, or the gleam of a leather-bound book, there
was at once a suggestion of discrimination and of informal ease. And
informal yet strangely exhilarating the friends of Doctor and Mrs.
Studdiford found it. Very famous folk liked to sit in these deep chairs,
and talk on and on beside this friendly fire, while London slept, and
the big clock in the hall turned night into morning. No hosts in London
were more popular than the big, genial doctor, and his clever, silent,
and most beautiful wife. Mrs. Studdiford was an essentially genuine
person; the flowers in her drawing-room, like the fruit on her table,
were sure to be sensibly in season; her clothes and her children's
clothes were extraordinarily simple, and her new English friends, simple
and domestic as they were, whatever their rank, found her to be one of
themselves in these things, and took her to their hearts.
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