In the study she nodded to my husband, turned completely around once, and then remarked that we seemed to be making no practical use of the space in our house. “This room would be much larger,” she said, “if you took out all those books.” Mrs. Ferrier thought the master bedroom should have faced west, and she barely put her head inside the smaller bedrooms. “They would be much larger,” I told her, “if we took out the beds.” Mrs. Ferrier fixed me with her cold eye. “If you took out the beds where would you sleep?” she wanted to know, and I followed her meekly downstairs.