There were hard chairs--far too many of them--with crochet antimacassars slipping off their seats, all of which sloped the wrong way.

The table wore a cloth of a cruel green colour with a yellow chain-stitch pattern round it.

Over the fireplace was a looking-glass that made you look much uglier than you really were, however plain you might be to begin with.

Then there was a mantelboard with maroon plush and wool fringe that did not match the plush; a dreary clock like a black marble tomb--it was silent as the grave too, for it had long since forgotten how to tick.

And there were painted glass vases that never had any flowers in, and a painted tambourine that no one ever played, and painted brackets with nothing on them.
'And maple-framed engravings of the Queen, the Houses of Parliament, the Plains of Heaven, and of a blunt-nosed woodman's flat return.' There were two books--last December's Bradshaw, and an odd volume of Plumridge's Commentary on Thessalonians.