The Bird's Nest

by Shirley Jackson

The house where they lived, in a neighborhood generally regarded as the most exclusive in our town, had, I thought, been put together by some family eccentric whose taste found its most perfect expression in the bleak, pudding-colored style so popular not too long ago among our grandparents, when taste and financial security were felt to be most surely expressed by a kind of ruthless ornamentation. I do not mean to say merely that Miss Jones’ home was ugly; to my mind it was hideous.