“My dear Mary, did you never take a party of children into the country in the spring for the first time?  If not, you never saw the prettiest and most innocent of intoxications.  I had once to take the little Pyrtons to their place in the country one April and May, months that they had always spent in London; and I assure you they were perfectly mad, only with the air, the sight of the hawthorns, and all the smells.  I was obliged to be content with what they could do, not what ought to be done, of lessons.  There was no sitting still on a fine morning.  I was as bad myself; the blood seemed to dance in one’s veins, and a room to be a prison.”

“This is not spring,” said Mary.

“No, but she began in spring, and habits were formed.”

“No doubt, but they cannot be good.  They keep up flightiness and excitability.”

“Oh, that’s grief, poor dear!”

“We bain’t carousing, we be dissembling grief, as the farmer told the clergyman who objected to merry-making after a funeral,” said Mary, rather severely.  Then she added, seeing Clara looked annoyed, “You think me hard on poor dear Carey, but indeed I am not doubting her affection or her grief.”

“Remember, a woman with children cannot give herself entirely up to sorrow without doing them harm.”

“Poor Carey, I am sure I do not want to see her given up to sorrow, only to have her a little more moderate, and perhaps select-—so as not to do herself harm with her relations-—who after all must be more important to her than any outsiders.”

The artist’s wife could not but see things a little differently from the schoolmaster’s sister, who moreover knew nothing of Carey’s former life; and Clara made answer—-

“Sending her down to these people was the greatest error of dear good Dr. Brownlow’s life.”

“I am not sure of that.  Blood is thicker than water.”

“But between sisters-in-law it is apt to be only ill-blood, and very turbid.”

“For shame, Clara.”

“Well, Mary, you must allow something for human nature’s reluctance to be treated as something not quite worthy of a handshake from a little country town Serene Highness!  I may be allowed to doubt whether Dr. Brownlow would not have done better to leave her unbound to those who can never be congenial”

“Granting that (not that I do grant it, for the Colonel is worthy), should not she be persuaded to conform herself.”

“To purr and lay eggs?  My dear, that did not succeed with the ugly duckling, even in early life.”

“Not after it had been among the swans?  You vain Clara!”

“I only lay claim to having seen the swans-—not to having brought many specimens down here.”

“Such as that Nita, or Mr. Hughes?”