and basket full of flowers, interspersed with bottles of swimming insects. The trio and Armine shouldered their butterfly-nets, and had a distribution of pill-boxes and bottles, in some of which were caterpillars intended to live, in others butterflies dead (or dying, it may be feared) of laurel leaves. Babie had a mighty nosegay; Janet put up the sketch, which showed a good deal of power; and the whole troop moved up the slope to go home by the lanes.
“What collectors you are!” said Mr. Ogilvie.
“For the museum,” answered Armine, eagerly.
“Haven’t you seen our museum?” cried Barbara, who had taken his hand. “Oh, it is such a beauty! We have got an Orobanche major, only it is not dry yet.”
“I’m afraid Babie likes fine words,” said her mother; “but our museum is a great amusement to us Londoners.”
They all walked home together, talking merrily, and Mr. and Miss Ogilvie came in with them, on special entreaty, to share the supper—milk, fruit, bread and butter and cheese, and sandwiches, which was laid out on the round table in the octagon vestibule, which formed the lowest story of the tower. It was partaken of standing, or sitting at case on the window-seats, a form or two, an old carved chair, or on the stairs, the children ascending them after their meal, and after securing in their own fashion their treasures for the morrow. The two cousins had already bidden good-night at the gate and gone home, and the Ogilvies followed their example in ten minutes, Caroline begging Mary to come up to her as soon as Mr. Ogilvie was disposed of by school hours.
“But you will be busy?” said Mary.
“Never mind, I am afraid we are not very regular,” said Carey.
It was by this time ten o’clock, and the two younger children were still to be heard shouting to one another up stairs about the leaves for their chrysalids. So when Mary came up the hill at half-past ten the next morning, she was the less surprised to find these two only just beginning breakfast, while their mother was sitting at the end of the table knitting, and hearing Janet repeat German poetry. The boys had long been in school.
Caroline jumped up and threw her arms round Mary’s neck, declaring that now they would enjoy themselves. “We are very late,” she added, “but these late walks make the little people sleep, and I think it is better for them than tossing about, hot and cross.”
Mary was rather entertained at this new code, but said nothing, as Carey pointed out to the children how they were to occupy themselves under Janet’s charge, and the work they had to do showed that for their age they had lost no time.
The drawing-room showed indeed a contrast to the chaotic state in which it had been left. It was wonderfully pleasant-looking. The windows of the deep bay were all open to the lawn, shaded with blinds projecting out into the garden, where the parrot sat perched on her pole; pleasant nooks were arranged in the two sides of the bay window, with light chairs and small writing-tables, each with its glass of flowers; the piano stood across the arc, shutting off these windows into almost a separate room; low book-cases, with chiffonier cupboards and marble tops, ran round the walls, surmounted with many artistic ornaments. The central table was crowned with a tall glass of exquisitely-arranged grasses and wild flowers, and the choice and graceful nicknacks round it were such as might be traced to a London life in the artist world, and among grateful patients.
Brackets with vases and casts here and there projected from the walls, and some charming crayons and water-colours hung round them. The plastered walls had already been marked out in panels, and a growth of frescoes of bulrushes, ivy, and leaves of all kinds was beginning to overspread them, while on a nearer inspection the leaves proved to be fast becoming peopled with living portraits of butterflies and other insects; indeed Mary started at finding herself in, as she thought, unpleasant proximity to a pair of cockchafers.
“Ah! I tell the children that we shall be suspected of putting those creatures there as a trial to the old ladies’ nerves,” said Caroline, laughing.
“I confess they are startling to those who don’t like creeping things! Have you many old ladies, Carey?”
“Not very many. I fancy they don’t take to me more than I take to them, so we are mutually satisfied.”
“But is that a good thing?” said Mary anxiously.
“I don’t know,” said Carey, indifferently. “At least I do know,” she added, “that I always used to be told I didn’t try to make small talk, and I can do it less than ever now that it is the smallest of small, and my heart faints from it. Oh Mary!”
“My poor dear Caroline! But you say that you were told you ought to do it?”
“Well, yes. Dear granny wished it; but I think that was rather with a view to Joe’s popularity, and we haven’t any patients to think of now. I should think the less arrant gossip the children heard, the better.”
“But is it well to let them despise everybody?”
“Then the less they see of them, the better!”
“For shame, Carey!”
“Well, Mary, I dare say I am naughty. I do feel naughtier now than ever I did in my life; but I can’t help it! It just makes me mad to be worried or tied down,” and she pushed back her hair so that her unfortunate cap was only withheld from tumbling entirely off by the pin that held it.
“Oh, that wretched cap!” she cried, jumping up, petulantly, and going to the glass to set it to rights, but with so hasty a hand that the pin became entangled in her hair, and it needed Mary’s quiet hand to set it to rights; “it’s just an emblem of all the rest of it; I wouldn’t wear it another day, but that I’m afraid of Ellen and Robert, and it perfectly drives me wild. And I know Joe couldn’t have borne to see me in it.” At the Irishism of which she burst out laughing, and laughed herself into the tears that had never come when they were expected of her.
Mary caressed and soothed her, and told her she could well guess it was sadder to her now than even at first.
“Well, it is,” said Carey, looking up. “If one was sent out to sea in a boat, it wouldn’t be near so bad as long as one could see the dear old shore still, as when one had got out—out into the wide open—with nothing at all.”
And she stretched out her hands with a dreary, yearning gesture into the vacant space, such as it went to her friend’s heart to see.
“Ah! but there’s a haven at the end.”
“I suppose there is,” said Carey; “but it’s a long way off, and there’s dying first, and when people want to begin about it, they get so conventional, and if there’s one thing above another that I can’t stand, it is being bored.”
“My poor child!”
“There, don’t be angry with me, because I’m telling you just what I am!”
Before any more could be said Janet opened the door, saying, “Mother, Emma wants to see you.”
“Oh! I forgot,” cried Carey, hurrying off, while Janet came forward to the guest in her grown-up way, and asked—
“Have you been to the Water-Colour Exhibition, Miss Ogilvie?”
“Yes; Mr. Acton took me one Saturday afternoon.”
“Oh! then he would be sure to show you Nita Ray’s picture. I want so much to know how it strikes people.”
