Caroline looked up, and said, “I beg your pardon, Ellen-—what is it?”

“If you can attend a moment,” said she, gravely; “I must be going to my boys’ dinner.  But Robert wishes to know whether he shall order this paper for the drawing-room.  It cannot be put up yet, of course; but Smith has only a certain quantity of it, and it is so stylish that he said the Colonel had better secure it at once.”

She spread the roll of paper on the hall table.  It was a white paper, slightly tinted, and seemed intended to represent coral branches, with starry-looking things at the ends.

“The aquarium at the Zoo,” muttered Bobus; and Caroline herself, meeting Allen’s eye, could not refrain from adding,

“The worms they crawled in,
And the worms they crawled out.”

“Mother!” cried Jock, “I thought you were going to paint it all over with jolly things.”

“Frescoes,” said Allen; “sha’n’t you, mother?”

“If your uncle does not object,” said his mother, choking down a giggle.  “Those plaster panels are so tempting for frescoes, Ellen.”

“Frescoes!  Why, those are those horrid improper-looking gods and goddesses in clouds and chariots on the ceilings at Belforest,” observed that lady, in a half-puzzled, half-offended tone of voice, that most perilously tickled the fancy of Mother Carey and her brood! and she could hardly command her voice to make answer, “Never fear, Ellen; we are not going to attempt allegorical monstrosities, only to make a bower of green leaves and flowers such as we see round us; though after what we have seen to-day that seems presumptuous enough.  Fancy, Janet! golden green trees and porcelain blue ground, all in one bath of sunshine.  Such things must be seen to be believed in.”

Poor Mrs. Robert Brownlow!  She went home and sighed, as she said to her husband, “Well, what is to become of those poor things I do not know.  One would sometimes think poor Caroline was just a little touched in the head.”

“I hope not,” said the Colonel, rather alarmed.

“It may be only affectation,” said his lady, in a consolatory tone.  “I am afraid poor Joe did live with a very odd set of people-— artists, and all that kind of thing.  I am sure I don’t blame her, poor thing!  But she is worse to manage than any child, because you can’t bid her mind what she is about, and not talk nonsense.  When she leaves her house in such a state, and no one but that poor girl to see to anything, and comes home all over mud, raving about fairy-land, and gold trees and blue ground; when she has just got into a bog in Belforest coppice—-littering the whole place, too, with common wild flowers.  If it had been Essie and Ellie, I should just have put them in the corner for making such a mess!”

The Colonel laughed a little to himself, and said, consolingly, “Well, well, you know all these country things are new to her.  You must be patient with her.”