“We have done all we could in your absence,” said her sister-in-law, in a reproachful voice.
“Thank you; I’m sure it is very good of you. Janet—Janet, where’s the great Dutch bowl—and the little Salviati? Nothing else is worthy of this dear little fairy thing.”
“What is it? Just common wood-sorrel,” said the other lady, in utter amaze.
“Ah, Ellen, you think me demented. You little know what it is to see spring for the first time. Ah! that’s right, Janet. Now, Babie, we’ll make a little bit of fairy-land—”
“Don’t put all those littering flowers on that nice clean chintz, children,” exclaimed the aunt, as though all her work were about to be undone.
And then a trampling of boy’s boots being heard and shouts of “Mother,” Carey darted out into the hall to hear fragments of school intelligence as to work and play, tumbling over one another, from Bobus and Jock both at once, in the midst of which Mrs. Robert Brownlow came out with her hat on, and stood, with her air of patient serenity, waiting for an interval.
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 fairyland, 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.”
Patient! That had to be the burthen of the song on both sides. Carey was pushing back her hair with a fierce, wild sense of impatience with that calm assumption that fretted her beyond all bearing, and made her feel desolate beyond all else. She would have, she thought, done well enough alone with her children, and scrambled into her new home; but the directions, however needful, seemed to be continually insulting her understanding. When she was advised as to the best butcher and baker, there was a ring in her ears as if Ellen meant that these were safe men for a senseless creature like her, and she could not encounter them with her orders without wondering whether they had been told to treat her well.
Indeed, one of the chief drawbacks to Carey’s comfort was her difficulty in attending to what her brother and sister-in-law said to her. Something in the measured tones of the Colonel always made her thoughts wander as from a dull sermon; and this was more unlucky in his case than in his wife’s—for Ellen used such reiterations that there was a fair chance of catching her drift the second or third time, if not the first, whereas all he said was well weighed and arranged, and was only too heavy and sententious.
Kencroft, the home of the Colonel and his family, Mrs. Robert Brownlow’s inheritance, was certainly “a picture of a place.” It had probably been an appendage of the old minster, though the house was only of the seventeenth century; but that was substantial and venerable of its kind, and exceedingly comfortable and roomy, with everything kept in perfect order. Caroline could not quite think the furniture worthy of it, but that was not for want of the desire to do everything handsomely and fashionably. Moreover, in spite of the schoolroom and nurseryful of children, marvels of needlework and knitting adorned every table, chair, and sofa, while even in the midst of the town Kencroft had its own charming garden; a lawn, once devoted to bowls and now to croquet, an old-fashioned walled kitchen garden, sloping up the hill, and a paddock sufficient to make cows and pigs part of the establishment.
The Colonel had devoted himself to gardening and poultry with the mingled ardour and precision of a man who needed something to supply the place of his soldierly duties; and though his fervour had relaxed under the influence of ease, gout, and substantial flesh, enough remained to keep up apple-pie order without-doors, and render Kencroft almost a show place. The meadow lay behind the house, and a gravel walk leading along its shaded border opened into the lane about ten yards from the gate of the Pagoda, as Colonel and Mrs. Brownlow and the post office laboured to call it; the Folly, as came so much more naturally to everyone’s lips. It had been the work of the one eccentric man in Mrs. Robert Brownlow’s family, and was thus her property. It had hung long on hand, being difficult to let, and after making sufficient additions, it had been decided that, at a nominal rent, it would house the family thrown upon the hands of the good Colonel.
CHAPTER VII. – THE COLONEL’S CHICKENS
They censured the bantam for strutting and crowing, In those vile pantaloons that he fancied looked knowing; And a want of decorum caused many demurs Against the game chicken for coming in spurs.
Left to themselves, Mother Carey, with Janet and old nurse, completed their arrangements so well that when Jessie looked in at five o’clock, with a few choice flowers covering a fine cucumber in her basket, she exclaimed in surprise, “How nice you have made it all look, I shall be so glad to tell mamma.”
“Tell her what?” asked Janet.
“That you have really made the room look nice,” said Jessie.
“Thank you,” said her cousin, ironically. “You see we have as many hands as other people. Didn’t Aunt Ellen think we had?”
“Of course she did,” said Jessie, a pretty, kindly creature, but slow