“They are too hideous to live,” said Ina; “they ought to be burned. It is our plain duty to burn them.”
Therefore they burned them, and brought out some of the parlor chairs to replace them. Then Eddy was sent to Rosenstein's, the village dry-goods store of Banbridge, for yards of green mosquito netting, which, the Carroll credit being newly established with a blare of trumpets, he purchased. Then they had tacked up the green mosquito netting over the window and door gaps, for they had forcibly wrenched the ornate door from its hinges and added it to the bonfire, and the temple of the Muses stood in a film of gently undulating green under the green willows, and was rather a thing of beauty.
The Carrolls loved to pass away the time in that retreat veiled with cloudy green, through which they could see the dull glimmer of the pond, like an old shield of silver, reflecting the waving garlands of the willows, which at that time of year were as beautiful as trees of heaven, having effects of waving lines of liquid green light, and the charming violet-blue turf around them.
The afternoon of the call all the female members of the Carroll family were out there. Captain Carroll was in the City, and Eddy, who, being a boy, was more susceptible to the lash of atmospheric influence, had gone fishing.
“I wonder why Eddy likes to go fishing,” said Mrs. Carroll, in her sweet drawl. “Eddy never caught anything.”
“You don't have a very high opinion of your son's powers as a fisherman, Amy,” said Ina, and they all laughed. The Carrolls were an easy-to-laugh family, and always seemed to find delicious humor in one another's remarks.
“Amy never thinks any of us can catch anything,” said Charlotte, the younger daughter, and they all laughed again.
Mrs. Carroll was always Amy in her family. Never did one of her children address her as a parent.
They were a charming group in the little, green, gloomy place, each with the strongest possible family likeness to the others. They were as much alike as the roses on one bush; all were, although not tall, long, and slim of body, and childishly round of face, with delicate coloring; all had pathetic dark eyes and soft lengths of dark hair. Mrs. Carroll and her husband's sister, although not nearly related (Mrs. Carroll had married her many-times-removed cousin), resembled each other as if they had been sisters of one family, and the children resembled their mother. The only difference among any of them was a slight difference of expression that existed mostly in the youngest girl, Charlotte. There were occasions when Charlotte Carroll's expression of soft and pathetic wistfulness and pleading could change to an expression of defiance, almost fierceness.
Her mother often told her that she resembled in disposition her paternal grandmother, who had been a woman of high temper, albeit a great beauty.