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!”