sly, 'that's prophetic vision. And you remember dreams, don't
you? So why not visions? You never do seem to understand the simplest
thing.'

It went to sand again at once.

Anthea crept down in her nightgown to give one last kiss to old Nurse,
and one last look at the beautiful testimonial hanging, by its tapes,
its glue now firmly set, in glazed glory on the wall of the kitchen.

'Good-night, bless your loving heart,' said old Nurse, 'if only you
don't catch your deather-cold!'

CHAPTER 13. THE SHIPWRECK ON THE TIN ISLANDS

'Blue and red,' said Jane softly, 'make purple.'

'Not always they don't,' said Cyril, 'it has to be crimson lake
and Prussian blue. If you mix Vermilion and Indigo you get the most
loathsome slate colour.'

'Sepia's the nastiest colour in the box, I think,' said Jane, sucking
her brush.

They were all painting. Nurse in the flush of grateful emotion, excited
by Robert's border of poppies, had presented each of the four with a
shilling paint-box, and had supplemented the gift with a pile of old
copies of the Illustrated London News.

'Sepia,' said Cyril instructively, 'is made out of beastly cuttlefish.'

'Purple's made out of a fish, as well as out of red and blue,' said
Robert. 'Tyrian purple was, I know.'

'Out of lobsters?' said Jane dreamily. 'They're red when they're boiled,
and blue when they aren't. If you mixed live and dead lobsters you'd get
Tyrian purple.'

'_I_ shouldn't like to mix anything with a live lobster,' said Anthea,
shuddering.

'Well, there aren't any other red and blue fish,' said Jane; 'you'd have
to.'

'I'd rather not have the purple,' said Anthea.

'The Tyrian purple wasn't that colour when it came out of the fish, nor
yet afterwards, it wasn't,' said Robert; 'it was scarlet really, and
Roman Emperors wore it. And it wasn't any nice colour while the fish had
it. It was a yellowish-white liquid of a creamy consistency.'

'How do you know?' asked Cyril.

'I read it,' said Robert, with the meek pride of superior knowledge.

'Where?' asked Cyril.

'In print,' said Robert, still more proudly meek.

'You think everything's true if it's printed,' said Cyril, naturally
annoyed, 'but it isn't. Father said so. Quite a lot of lies get printed,
especially in newspapers.'

'You see, as it happens,' said Robert, in what was really a rather
annoying tone, 'it wasn't a newspaper, it was in a book.'

'How sweet Chinese white is!' said Jane, dreamily suckin