They had a small vegetable garden, fenced in, and an
itinerant gardener looked after it, in Summer, but they had no flowers,
because they maintained a large herd of stray dogs, mostly mongrels,
that would have had no home had it not been for the hospitable twins.
Romeo bought the choicest cuts of beef for them and fed them himself.
Occasionally they added another to their collection and, at the last
census, had nineteen.
Their house would have delighted Madame Bernard--it was so eminently
harmonious and suitable. The ragged carpets showed the floor in many
places, and there were no curtains at any of the windows. Romeo
cherished a masculine distaste for curtains and Juliet did not trouble
herself to oppose him. The furniture was old and most of it was broken.
The large easy chair in the sitting room was almost disembowelled, and
springs showed through the sofa, except in the middle, where there was a
cavernous depression. Several really fine paintings adorned the walls,
and the dingy mantel was glorified by exquisite bits of Cloisonne and
iridescent glass, for which Juliet had a pronounced fancy.
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