“Oh, that wretched cap!” she cried, jumping up, petulantly, and going to the glass to set it to rights, but with so hasty a hand that the pin became entangled in her hair, and it needed Mary’s quiet hand to set it to rights; “it’s just an emblem of all the rest of it; I wouldn’t wear it another day, but that I’m afraid of Ellen and Robert, and it perfectly drives me wild.  And I know Joe couldn’t have borne to see me in it.”  At the Irishism of which she burst out laughing, and laughed herself into the tears that had never come when they were expected of her.

Mary caressed and soothed her, and told her she could well guess it was sadder to her now than even at first.

“Well, it is,” said Carey, looking up.  “If one was sent out to sea in a boat, it wouldn’t be near so bad as long as one could see the dear old shore still, as when one had got out-—out into the wide open-—with nothing at all.”

And she stretched out her hands with a dreary, yearning gesture into the vacant space, such as it went to her friend’s heart to see.

“Ah! but there’s a haven at the end.”

“I suppose there is,” said Carey; “but it’s a long way off, and there’s dying first, and when people want to begin about it, they get so conventional, and if there’s one thing above another that I can’t stand, it is being bored.”

“My poor child!”

“There, don’t be angry with me, because I’m telling you just what I am!”

Before any more could be said Janet opened the door, saying, “Mother, Emma wants to see you.”

“Oh!  I forgot,” cried Carey, hurrying off, while Janet came forward to the guest in her grown-up way, and asked—-

“Have you been to the Water-Colour Exhibition, Miss Ogilvie?”

“Yes; Mr. Acton took me one Saturday afternoon.”

“Oh! then he would be sure to show you Nita Ray’s picture.  I want so much to know how it strikes people.”

And Janet had plunged into a regular conversation about exhibitions, pictures, artists, concerts, lectures, &c., before her mother came back, talking with all the eagerness of an exile about her native country.  As a governess in her school-room, Miss Ogilvie had had little more than a key-hole view of all these things; but then what she had seen and heard had been chiefly through the Actons, and thus coincided with Janet’s own side of the world, and they were in full discussion when Caroline came back.

“There, I’ve disposed of the butcher and baker!” she said.  “Now we can be comfortable again.”

Mary expected Janet to repair to her own lessons, or to listen to those scales which Babie might be heard from a distance playing; but she only appealed to her mother about some picture of last year, and sat down to her drawing, while the conversation on pictures and books continued in animated style.  So far from sending her away, Mary fancied that Carey was rather glad to keep to surface matters, and to be prevented from another outbreak of feeling.