"And that big picture gallery into the bargain?"
"Yes."
"That's bein' grasping, for any one family to have so much," was Rupert's conclusion.
"Well, you see," said Lawrence, "we get the good of it, and they have the care."
"I don't see how we get the good of it," said Mrs. Copley. "I suppose if I had one of those golden birds, now, with the eyes of diamonds; or one of those wonderfully chased silver caskets; I should have enough to keep me in comfort the rest of my life. I think things are queer, somehow. One single one of those jewels that lie heaped up there, and I should want for nothing more in this world. And there they lie and nobody has 'em."
"Do you want for anything now, mother dear?" asked Dolly. She was busy at a side table, arranging something in a little frame, and did not look up from her work.
"I should think I did!" was Mrs. Copley's rejoinder. "What don't I want, from breath up?"
"Here you have had one wish fulfilled to-day—you have seen the Green vaults—and now we are going to Venice to fulfil another wish—what would you have?"
"I don't like to think I am going away from here. I like Dresden best of all the places we've been in. And I would like to go through the Green vaults—but why they are called so, I cannot conceive—about once every month. I would never get tired."
"So you would like to settle in Dresden?" said Lawrence. "I don't think it would be safe to let you go through the Green vaults often, Mrs. Copley; you would certainly be tempted too much for your principles. Miss Dolly, we had better get her away. When do we go, by the by?"