The drawing-room showed indeed a contrast to the chaotic state in which it had been left.  It was wonderfully pleasant-looking.  The windows of the deep bay were all open to the lawn, shaded with blinds projecting out into the garden, where the parrot sat perched on her pole; pleasant nooks were arranged in the two sides of the bay window, with light chairs and small writing-tables, each with its glass of flowers; the piano stood across the arc, shutting off these windows into almost a separate room; low book-cases, with chiffonier cupboards and marble tops, ran round the walls, surmounted with many artistic ornaments.  The central table was crowned with a tall glass of exquisitely-arranged grasses and wild flowers, and the choice and graceful nicknacks round it were such as might be traced to a London life in the artist world, and among grateful patients.

Brackets with vases and casts here and there projected from the walls, and some charming crayons and water-colours hung round them.  The plastered walls had already been marked out in panels, and a growth of frescoes of bulrushes, ivy, and leaves of all kinds was beginning to overspread them, while on a nearer inspection the leaves proved to be fast becoming peopled with living portraits of butterflies and other insects; indeed Mary started at finding herself in, as she thought, unpleasant proximity to a pair of cockchafers.

“Ah!  I tell the children that we shall be suspected of putting those creatures there as a trial to the old ladies’ nerves,” said Caroline, laughing.

“I confess they are startling to those who don’t like creeping things!  Have you many old ladies, Carey?”

“Not very many.  I fancy they don’t take to me more than I take to them, so we are mutually satisfied.”

“But is that a good thing?” said Mary anxiously.

“I don’t know,” said Carey, indifferently.  “At least I do know,” she added, “that I always used to be told I didn’t try to make small talk, and I can do it less than ever now that it is the smallest of small, and my heart faints from it.  Oh Mary!”

“My poor dear Caroline!  But you say that you were told you ought to do it?”

“Well, yes.  Dear granny wished it; but I think that was rather with a view to Joe’s popularity, and we haven’t any patients to think of now.  I should think the less arrant gossip the children heard, the better.”

“But is it well to let them despise everybody?”

“Then the less they see of them, the better!”

“For shame, Carey!”

“Well, Mary, I dare say I am naughty.  I do feel naughtier now than ever I did in my life; but I can’t help it!  It just makes me mad to be worried or tied down,” and she pushed back her hair so that her unfortunate cap was only withheld from tumbling entirely off by the pin that held it.