"I did like them," says Tommy. "Only some of them were queer. I wanted to know about them, but nobody would tell me—and——"
"Why, Tommy, I explained them all to you," says Joyce, reproachfully.
"You did in the first two little rooms and in the big room afterward, where the velvet seats were. They," looking at his father and raising his voice to an indignant note, "wouldn't let me run round on the top of them!"
"Good heavens!" says Mr. Monkton. "Can that be true? Truly this country is going to the dogs."
"Where do the dogs live?" asks Tommy, "What dogs? Why does the country want to go to them?"
"It doesn't want to go," explains his father. "But it will have to go, and the dogs will punish them for not letting you reduce its velvet seats to powder. Never mind, go on with your story; so that unnatural aunt of yours wouldn't tell you about the pictures, eh?"
"She did in the beginning, and when we got into the big room too, a little while. She told me about the great large one at the end, 'Christ and the Historian,' though I couldn't see the Historian anywhere, and——"
"She herself must be a most successful one," says Mr. Monkton, sotto voce.
"And then we came to the Innocents, and I perfectly hated that," says Tommy. "'Twas frightful! Everybody was as large as that," stretching out his arms and puffing out his cheeks, "and the babies were all so fat and so horrid. And then Felix came, and Joyce had to talk to him, so I didn't know any more."
"I think you forget," says Joyce. "There was that picture with lions in it. Mr. Dysart himself explained that to you."