“A splendid mansion has been given us, but my flower-bird has found it too full.  I wish for my native air.  Prescribe.”

The brevity of the message was very characteristic of the language.  Equally characteristic of the stylography was the fact that the words occupied about an inch beyond the address.  Following her pencil as she pointed to the ciphers, I said—­

“Is not asny care a false concord?  And why have you used the past tense?”

This ill-timed pedantry, applying to Martial grammar the rules of that with which my boyhood had been painfully familiarised, provoked, amid all our trouble, Eveena’s low silver-toned laugh.

“I meant it,” she answered.  “My father will look at his pupil’s writing with both eyes.”

“Well, you are out of reach even of the leveloo.”

She laughed again.

“Asnyca-re,” she said; the changed accentuation turning the former words into the well-remembered name of my landing-place, with the interrogative syllable annexed.

This message despatched, we could only await the reply.  Nestling among the cushions at my knee, her head resting on my breast, Eveena said—­

“And now, forgive my presumption in counselling you, and my reminding you of what is painful to both.  But what to us is as the course of the clock, is strange as the stars to you.  You must see—­them, and must order all household arrangements; and” (glancing at a dial fixed in the wall) “the black is driving down the green.”

“So much the better,” I said.  “I shall have less time to speak to them, and less chance of speaking or looking my mind.  And as to arrangements, those, of course, you must make.”

“I! forgive me,” she answered, “that is impossible.  It is for you to assign to each of us her part in the household, her chamber, her rank and duties.  You forget that I hold exactly the same position with the youngest among them, and cannot presume even to suggest, much less to direct.”

I was silent, and after a pause she went on—­

“It is not for me to advise you; but”—­

“Speak your thought, now and always, Eveena.  Even if I did not stand in so much need of your guidance in a new world, I never yet refused to hear counsel; and it is a wife’s right to offer it.”

“Is it?  We are not so taught,” she answered.  “I am afraid you have rougher ground to steer over than you are aware.  Alone with you, I hope I should have done nay best, remembering the lesson of the leveloo, never to give you the pain of teaching a different one.  But we shall no longer be alone; and you cannot hope to manage seven as you might manage one.  Moreover, these girls have neither had that first experience of your nature which made that lesson so impressive to me, nor the kindly and gentle training, under a mother’s care and a father’s mild authority, that I had enjoyed.  They would not understand the control that is not enforced.  They will obey when they must; and will feel that they must obey when they cannot deceive, and dare not rebel.  Do not think hardly of them for this.  They have known no life but that of the strict clockwork routine of a great Nursery, where no personal affection and no rule but that of force is possible.”