The next interruption was from the children, each armed with a pile of open books on the top of a slate.  Carey begged Mary to wait, and went outside the window with them, sitting down under a tree whence the murmured sounds of repetition could be heard, lasting about twenty minutes between the two, and then she returned, the little ones jumping on each side of her, Armine begging that Miss Ogilvie would come and see the museum, and Barbara saying that Jock wanted to help to show it off.

“Well, run now and put your own corners tidy,” suggested their mother.  “If Jock does not stay in the playground, he will come back in a quarter of an hour.”

“And Mr. Ogilvie will come then.  I invited him,” said Babie.

At which Carey laughed incredulously; but Janet, observing that she must go and see that the children did not do more harm than good, walked off, and Mary said—-

“I should not wonder if he did act on the invitation.”

“I hope he will.  It would have only been civil in me to have asked him, considering that I have taken possession of you,” said Caroline.

“I fully expect to see him on Miss Barbara’s invitation.  Do you know, Carey, he says you have transformed his school.”

“Translated it, like Bottom the Weaver.”

“In the reverse direction.  He says you have made the mothers see to their boys’ preparation, and wakened up the intellects.”

“Have I?  I thought I had only kept my own boys up to the mark.  Yes, and there’s Johnny.  Do you know, Mary, it is very funny, but that boy Johnny has adopted me.  He comes after me everywhere like a shadow, and there’s nothing he won’t do for me, even learning his lessons.  You see the poor boy has a good deal of native sense, Brownlow sense, and mind had been more stifled than wanting in him.  Nobody had ever put things to him by the right end, and when he once let me do it for him, it was quite a revelation, and he has been so happy and prosperous that he hardly knows himself.  Poor boy, there is something very honest and true about him, and so affectionate!  He is a little like his uncle, and I can’t help being fond of him.  Then Robin is just as devoted to Jock, though I can’t say the results are so very desirable, for Jock is a monkey, I must confess, and it is irresistible to a monkey to have a bear that he can lead to do anything.  I hear that Robin used to be the good boy of the establishment, and I am afraid he is not that now.”

“But can’t you stop that?”

“My dear, nobody could think of Jock’s devices so as to stop them, who had not his own monkey brain.  Who would have thought of his getting the whole set to dress up as nigger singers, with black faces and banjoes, and coming to dance and sing in front of the windows?”

“There wasn’t much harm in that.”