all of it?" asks Joyce, gazing at her sister with a curious
smile, that is troubled, but has still some growing sense of amusement
in it. "What an involved statement! Surely you have forgotten something.
That Mr. Dysart was standing near you, for example, and will probably
find that it is absolutely imperative that he should call on Lady
Monkton next Wednesday, too. Don't set your heart on that, Barbara. I
think, after my interview with him to-day, he will not want to see Lady
Monkton next Wednesday."

"I know nothing about whether he is to be there or not," says Barbara
steadily. "But as Sir George likes to see the children very often, I
thought of taking them there on that day. It is Lady Monkton's day. And
Dicky Browne, at all events, will be there, and I dare say a good many
of your old friends. Do say you will come."

"I hate old friends!" says the girl fractiously. "I don't believe I have
any. I don't believe anybody has. I----"

She pauses as the door is thrown open, and Tommy comes prancing into the
room accompanied by his father.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

"Children know very little; but their capacity of comprehension is
great."

"I've just been interviewing Tommy on the subject of the pictures," says
Mr. Monkton. "So far as I can make out he disapproves of Dore."

"Oh! Tommy! and all such beautiful pictures out of the Bible," says his
mother.

"I did like them," says Tommy. "Only some of them were queer. I wanted
to know about them, but nobody would tell me--and----"

"Why, Tommy, I explained them all to you," says Joyce, reproachfully.

"You did in the first two little rooms and in the big room afterward,
where the velvet seats were. They," looking at his father and raising
his voice to an indignant note, "wouldn't let me run round on the top of
them!"

"Good heavens!" says Mr. Monkton. "Can that be true? Truly this country
is going to the dogs."

"Where do the dogs live?" asks Tommy, "What dogs? Why does the country
want to go to them?"

"It doesn't want to go," explains his father. "But it will have to go,
and the dogs will punish them for not letting you reduce its velvet
seats to powder. Never mind, go on with your story; so that unnatural
aunt of yours wouldn't tell you about the pictures, eh?"

"She did in the beginning, and when we got into the big room too, a
little while. She told me about the great large one at the end, 'Christ
and the Historian,' though I couldn't see the