horship, would have
found that it was The Retreat. Probably this would have been revealed
even if the texts had been merely Bowdlerised with Indian-rubber or
a sponge, because there were a good many objectionable passages.

But The Retreat _was_ a retreat, and smelt strong of the Hermits, who
were cats. Krakatoa was not a volcano, except so far as eruptions on
the paint went. But then it had become Krakatoa through a mistake; for
the four coats of paint at the end of the first seven years, as per
agreement, having completely hidden the first name, Saratoga, and the
builders' retention of it having been feeble--possibly even affected
by newspaper posters, for it was not long after the date of the great
eruption--the new name had crept in in the absence of those who could
have corrected it, but had gone to Brighton to get out of the smell of
the paint.

When they returned, Mr. Prichard, the builder, though shocked and
hurt at the discovery that the wrong name had been put up, was
strongly opposed to any correction or alteration, especially as it
would always show if altered back. You couldn't make a job of it; not
to say a proper job. Besides, the names were morally the same, and
it was absurd to allow a variation in the letters to impose on our
imagination. The two names had been applied to very different
turns-out abroad, certainly; but then they did all sorts of things
abroad. If Saratoga, why not Krakatoa? Mr. Prichard was entrenched in
a stronghold of total ignorance of literary matters, and his position,
that mere differences of words ought not to tell upon a healthy mind,
was difficult to shake, especially as he had the coign of vantage. He
had only to remain inanimate, and what could a (presumably) widow lady
with one small daughter do against him? So at the end of the first
seven years, what had been Saratoga became Krakatoa, and remained so.

And it was in the back garden of the again newly painted villa, seven
years later, that the lady of the house, who was watering the garden
in the cool of the afternoon, asked her excited daughter, who had just
come home in a cab, what on earth could have prompted her to do such
a mad thing, such a perfectly _insane_ thing! We shall see what it was
immediately.

"Oh, Sally, Sally!" exclaimed that young person's still young and very
handsome mother. "What _will_ the child do next?"

"Oh, mamma, mamma!" answers Sally, just on the edge of a burst of tears;
"what _was_ I t