To which the popinjay responded, “We are all Mother Carey’s chickens.”

“I did mean salt-—very real salt,” said Mary, rather sadly.

“I have not got the recipe;” said Carey.  “Indeed I do try to do what must be done.  My boys can hold their own in Bible and Catechism questions!  Ask your brother if they can’t.  And Army is a dear little fellow, with a bit of the angel, or of his father, in him; but when we’ve done our church, I see no good in decorous boredom; and if I did, what would become of the boys?”

“I don’t agree to the necessity of boredom,” said Mary; “but let that pass.  There are things I wanted to say.”

“I knew it was coming.  The Colonel has been at me already, levelling his thunders at my devoted head.  Won’t that do?”

“Not if you heed him so little.”

“My dear, if I heeded, I should be annihilated.  When he says ’My good little sister,’ I know he means ‘You little idiot;’ so if I did not think of something else, what might not be the consequence?  Why, he said I was not behaving decently!”

“No more you are.”

“And that I had no proper feeling,” continued she, laughing almost hysterically.

“No one can wonder at his being pained.  It ought never to have happened.”

“Are you gone over to Mrs. Grundy?  However, there’s this comfort, you’ll not mention Mrs. Coffinkey’s sister-in-law.”

“I’m sure the Colonel didn’t!”

“Ellen does though, with tragic effect.”

“You are not like yourself, Carey.”

“No, indeed I’m not!  I was a happy creature a little while ago; or was it a very long, long time ago?  Then I had everybody to help me and make much of me!  And now I’ve got into a great dull mist, and am always knocking my head against something or somebody; and when I try to keep up the old friendships and kindnesses-—poor little fragments as they are-—everybody falls upon me, even you, Mary.”

“Pardon me, dearest.  Some friendships and kindnesses that were once admirable, may be less suitable to your present circumstances.”

“As if I didn’t know that!” said Carey, with an angry, hurt little laugh; “and so I waited to be chaperoned up to the eyes between Clara Acton and the Duck in the very house with me.  Now, Mary, I put it to you.  Has one word passed that could do harm?  Isn’t it much more innocent than all the Coffinkey gossip?  I have no doubt Mrs. Coffinkey’s sister-in-law looks up from her black-bordered pocket-handkerchief to hear how Mrs. Brownlow’s sister-in-law went to the cricket-match.  Do you know, Robert really thought I had been there?  I only wonder how many I scored.  I dare say Mrs. Coffinkey’s sister-in-law knows.”

“It just shows how careful you should be.”

“And I wonder what would become of the children if I shut myself up with a pile of pocket-handkerchiefs bordered an inch deep.  What right have they to meddle with my ways, and my friends, and my boys?”