“I don’t quite say it didn’t, but that doesn’t make it any less ugly. I quite understand that people can’t always have nice things, but at least they needn’t have things that are merely grotesque. What do you say? I can think of nothing more devastating, more utterly smug than that hideous style⁠—cabinets covered all over with swans’ heads, like bath-taps!”

“But I believe, all the same, that they’ve got some lovely things; why, they must have that famous mosaic table on which the Treaty of⁠ ⁠…”