There's an extra charge each month if you don't use their furniture." May Elger put down the tortoise shell shoehorn and looked around her small room. She thought of her little collection of furniture as choices she might have made from a burning house. Not the most valuable things, but the first to come to mind. They had allowed her her little satinwood writing table with ormolu mounts and a graceful gilded cane chair. The chest that held her clothes—the few she needed—was Empire. On the chest was a Lowestoft armorial plate which her doctor insisted on using for an ashtray. Snuffing out his cigarettes was eroding the honey gold on the crest, but she never corrected him. He was the one who pronounced her sentences.

Only the bed belonged to the nursing home. They insisted on its remaining. Who could blame them for believing that she would need it as she grew older. The evidence was all around them. With its bulky mechanical contrivances that could manipulate your body into infinite angles, the bed looked like a small factory set down in the midst of the delicate furniture.

Her little Renoir painting which she missed most was not allowed her. The insurance company had pronounced the security at the nursing home inadequate. May considered that ironic. She had found the security so effective that in the year and ten months of her stay, and in spite of the unlocked doors, she had never ventured out of the home by herself. But then her daughter had placed her there, and May was always ready to accept the appraisal of others.