Edward and
Mr. Woodbourne contrived to make the conversation more entertaining
than Elizabeth thought it ever could be in any party in which Mrs.
Hazleby was present.

Afterwards in the drawing-room, Dora's bulrushes and the other
children's purchases were duly admired, and the little people, being
rather fatigued, were early sent to bed, although Edward vehemently
insisted, with his eyes half shut, that he was not in the least sleepy.
The elder girls then arranged themselves round the table. Helen was
working a bunch of roses of different colours; Anne admired it very
much, but critics were not wanting to this, as to every other
performance of Helen's.

'It is all very pretty except that rose,' said Katherine, 'but I am
sure that is an unnatural colour.--Is it not, Anne?'

'I do not think that I ever saw one like it,' said Anne; 'but that is
no proof that there is no such flower.'

'What do you think, Lizzie?' said Katherine; 'ought not Helen to alter
it?'

Anne was rather alarmed by this appeal; but Elizabeth answered
carelessly, without looking up, 'Oh! you know I know nothing about that
kind of work.'

'But you can tell what colour a rose is,' persisted Katherine; 'now do
not you think Helen will spoil her work with that orange-coloured rose?
who ever heard of such a thing?'

Helen was on the point of saying that one of the gable-ends of the
house at Dykelands was covered with a single rose of that colour, but
she remembered that Dykelands was not a safe subject, and refrained.

'Come, do not have a York and Lancaster war about an orange-coloured
rose, Kate,' said Elizabeth, coming up to Helen; 'why, Anne, where are
your eyes? did you never see an Austrian briar, just the the colour of
Helen's lambs-wools?'

Though this was a mere trifle, Helen was pleased to find that Elizabeth
could sometimes be on her side of the question, and worked on in a more
cheerful spirit.

'Why, Anne,' said Elizabeth, presently after, 'you are doing that old
wreath over again, that you were about last year, when I was at Merton
Hall.'

'Yes,' said Anne; 'it is a pattern which I like very much.'

'Do you like working the same thing over again?' said Katherine; 'I
always get tired of it.'

'I like it very much,' said Anne; 'going over the same stitches puts me
in mind of things that were going on when I was working them
before.--Now, Lizzie, the edge of that poppy seems to have written in
it all that delightful talk we h