“Oh, no, no, dear!  You are too good; and I’m sure the rooms are lovely, and it would hurt Gracie’s feelings to change them.  No:  I must try and get over it.  I know just how silly it is, and I shall try to overcome it.  If I had only more strength, I believe I could.”

“Well, darling, you must go to the sea-side.  I shall have you sent right off to Newport.  Gracie can go with you.”

“Oh, no, John! not for the world.  Gracie must stay, and keep house for you.  She’s such a help to you, that it would be a shame to take her away.  But I think mamma would go with me,—­if you could take me there, and engage my rooms and all that, why, mamma could stay with me, you know.  To be sure, it would be a trial not to have you there; but then if I could get up my strength, you know,”—­

“Exactly, certainly; and, Lillie, how would you like the parlors arranged if you had your own way?”

“Oh, John! don’t think of it.”

“But I just want to know for curiosity.  Now, how would you have them if you could?”

“Well, then, John, don’t you think it would be lovely to have them frescoed?  Did you ever see the Folingsbees’ rooms in New York?  They were so lovely!—­one was all in blue, and the other in crimson, opening into each other; with carved furniture, and those marquetrie tables, and all sorts of little French things.  They had such a gay and cheerful look.”

“Now, Lillie, if you want our rooms like that, you shall have them.”

“O John, you are too good!  I couldn’t ask such a sacrifice.”

“Oh, pshaw! it isn’t a sacrifice.  I don’t doubt I shall like them better myself.  Your taste is perfect, Lillie; and, now I think of it, I wonder that I thought of bringing you here without consulting you in every particular.  A woman ought to be queen in her own house, I am sure.”

“But, Gracie!  Now, John, I know she has associations with all the things in this house, and it would be cruel to her,” said Lillie, with a sigh.

“Pshaw!  Gracie is a good, sensible girl, and ready to make any rational change.  I suppose we have been living rather behind the times, and are somewhat rusty, that’s a fact; but Gracie will enjoy new things as much as anybody, I dare say.”

“Well, John, since you are set on it, there’s Charlie Ferrola, one of my particular friends; he’s an architect, and does all about arranging rooms and houses and furniture.  He did the Folingsbees’, and the Hortons’, and the Jeromes’, and no end of real nobby people’s houses; and made them perfectly lovely.  People say that one wouldn’t know that they weren’t in Paris, in houses that he does.”

Now, our John was by nature a good solid chip of the old Anglo-Saxon block; and, if there was any thing that he had no special affinity for, it was for French things.  He had small opinion of French morals, and French ways in general; but then at this moment he saw his Lillie, whom, but half an hour before, he found all pale and tear-drenched, now radiant and joyous, sleek as a humming-bird, with the light in her eyes, and the rattle on the tip of her tongue; and he felt so delighted to see her bright and gay and joyous, that he would have turned his house into the Jardin Mabille, if that were possible.