The Chalet des Muguets was typically French and typically suburban; but
where it differed from thousands of houses of the same type, dotted round
in the countrysides within easy reach of Paris, was that it was let each
year to a different set of tenants.
In Sylvia Bailey's eyes the queer little place lacked all the elements
which go to make a home; and, sitting there, in that airless, darkened
dining-room, she wondered, not for the first time, why the Wachners chose
to live in such a comfortless way.
She glanced round her with distaste. Everything was not only cheap, but
common and tawdry. Still, the dining-room, like all the other rooms in
the chalet, was singularly clean, and almost oppressively neat.
There was the round table at which she and Anna Wolsky had been so kindly
entertained, the ugly buffet or sideboard, and in place of the dull
parquet floor she remembered on her first visit lay an ugly piece of
linoleum, of which the pattern printed on the surface simulated a red
and blue marble pavement.
Once more the change puzzled her, perhaps unreasonably.
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