‘Praises the mother’s management of the young one. John Edward: Edward for call-name. Madge boasts his power for sleeping.’
‘He gives little trouble.’
‘And babes repay us! We learn from small things. Out of the mouth of babes wisdom? Well, their habits show the wisdom of the mother. A good mother! There’s no higher title. A lady of my acquaintance bids fair to win it, they say.’
Carinthia looked in simplicity, saw herself, and said ‘If a mother may rear her boy till he must go to school, she is rewarded for all she does.’
‘Ah,’ said he, nodding over her mania of the perpetual suspicion. ‘Leddings, Queeney, the servants here, run smoothly?’
‘They do: they are happy in serving.’
‘You see, we English are not such bad fellows when we’re known. The climate to-day, for example, is rather trying.’
‘I miss colours most in England,’ said Carinthia. ‘I like the winds. Now and then we have a day to remember.’
‘We ‘re to be “the artist of the day,” Gower Woodseer says, and we get an attachment to the dreariest; we are to study “small variations of the commonplace”—dear me! But he may be right. The “sky of lead and scraped lead” over those lines, he points out; and it’s not a bad trick for reconciling us to gloomy English weather. You take lessons from him?’
‘I can always learn from him,’ said Carinthia.