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12 |
IDEAL HOME LIFE |
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decking the mantelpiece of the room you are looting. Little silver figures of knights in armor and what not—take them if the mistress of the house will permit you.
Chessmen, too, as many as you can get, the carved ivory ones, of red and white, and the black and brown kind where the heads of the kings and queens are so like marbles and those of the pawns like boot-buttons; and those little metal animals, heavy and colored life-like, which you see on glass shelves in the fancy shop; take them, too. They will serve other uses than those to which you will dedicate your Noah's Ark animals. Card counters, especially the golden and mother-of-pearl kinds, and dominoes, and the willow-pattern pots and a blue cup or so from the glass-fronted cupboard. Take all these, always giving preference to the things that you will not be asked to put back the same day.
Little Japanese cabinets, tea-caddies of tortoise-shell or wood or silver, silver boxes—and boxes of all beautiful kinds. Do not take the playing cards that people play bridge with; these are never quite the same after they have been used in magic cities, and the queen of hearts always gets lost. You can usually acquire odd packs of cards that nobody wants. Those with black and gold backs are the best. They make gorgeous pagodas, and a touch of plasticine keeps each card where it should be.
In the dining-room you may acquire perhaps, at least you can in mine, brass finger-bowls, and the lids of urns and kettles from the sideboard—egg-cups and mugs and bowls of luster and of blue. The library will yield you books and atlases—very useful for roofs these last, if they do not slope too much from back to edge; if they do, you can get even with them by wedges of paper laid in on the thin side.
But the kitchen will be your happiest hunting-ground, and here you will make a good bag even in those houses where you are not allowed any of the treasures from the living-room or the dining-room.
Cans of all kinds and shapes, from the big brother where coffee once lived to the square smaller ones designed for cocoa, mustard, pepper, and so forth. |
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