o almost black shadows. It was like
stained glass in a church, thought Caroline, stroking it
surreptitiously, and like stained glass, too, were the lovely books,
bloody red, grassy green and brown, like Autumn woods, with edges of
gold when the sunlight struck them. They made the walls like a great
jewelled cabinet, lined from floor to ceiling: here and there a
niche of polished wood held a white, clear-cut head. From the
ceiling great opal tinted globes swung on dull brass chains; they
swayed ever so slightly when one watched them closely.

"This is my favorite room, Duchess," said Caroline, "isn't it
yours?"

"Do you really think I look like one?" returned the lady, "the only
duchess I ever saw was fat--horribly fat. It is a very handsome
library, of course."

"Then _she_ didn't look like a duchess, that's all," Caroline
explained. "What I like about this library is, it's so clean. And
you can pull the chairs out and show those big, shiny yellow ones on
the bottom shelf."

"Of course; why not?" said the Duchess, dropping into a great carved
chair with griffins' heads on the top.

"Why, you can't do that at Uncle Joe's," Caroline confided, sitting
on a small griffin stool at the lady's feet, "because General gets
at the bottom row and smears 'em. You see he's only two, and you
can't blame him, but he licks himself dreadfully and then rubs it on
the backs. He marks them, too, inside, with a pencil or a hatpin,
or even an orange-wood stick that you clean your nails with. Yours
is made of pearl, you know, but most--a great many, I mean--people
have them wood. And so the chairs have to be all leaned around
against the walls to keep him from the books."

The Duchess drew a long breath. "And your uncle objects?" she said,
between her teeth.

"Uncle Joe says," Caroline returned, patting the griffin heads on
her little stool, "that if the President had General in his library
for half an hour he'd feel different about race suicide."

The Duchess laughed shortly.

"That is possible, too," she agreed. "You said Cousin Joe was
well--and Edith?"

"Oh, yes, they're well--I mean, they're very well indeed, thank
you," said Caroline. "Uncle Joe says they have to be, with the
General's shoes two dollars and a half a pair! You see he has quite
thick soles, now--he runs about everywhere. Aunt Edith says he needs
a mounted policeman 'stead of a nurse."

"Did Edith get rested after the moving?"

"Oh, yes," Caroline answere