“Have you been helping Janet? Oh, how kind!” she said, refreshed by her delightsome morning into putting a bright face on it.
“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.