I should be just as mad as I could be, if John acted so."

"Oh, my dear! the cases are different: Charlie has such peculiarities
of genius. The artistic nature, you know, requires soothing." Here
they stopped, and rang at the door of a neat little house, and were
ushered into a pair of those characteristic parlors which show that
they have been arranged by a home-worshipper, and a mother. There were
plants and birds and flowers, and little _genre_ pictures of children,
animals, and household interiors, arranged with a loving eye and hand.

"Did you ever see any thing so perfectly characteristic?" said Mrs.
Follingsbee, looking around her as if she were going to faint.

"This woman drives Charlie perfectly wild, because she has no
appreciation of high art. Now, I sent her photographs of Michel
Angelo's 'Moses,' and 'Night and Morning;' and I really wish you would
see where she hung them,--away in yonder dark corner!"

"I think myself they are enough to scare the owls," said Lillie, after
a moment's contemplation.

"But, my dear, you know they are the thing," said Mrs. Follingsbee:
"people never like such things at first, and one must get used to high
art before one forms a taste for it. The thing with her is, she has no
docility. She does not try to enter into Charlie's tastes."

The woman with "no docility" entered at this moment,--a little
snow-drop of a creature, with a pale, pure, Madonna face, and that sad
air of hopeless firmness which is seen unhappily in the faces of so
many women.

"I had to bring baby down," she said. "I have no nurse to-day, and he
has been threatened with croup."

[Illustration: "I had to bring baby down."]

"The dear little fellow!" said Mrs. Follingsbee, with officious
graciousness. "So glad you brought him down; come to his aunty?" she
inquired lovingly, as the little fellow shrank away, and regarded
her with round, astonished eyes. "Why will you not come to my next
reception, Mrs. Ferrola?" she added. "You make yourself quite a
stranger to us. You ought to give yourself some variety."

"The fact is, Mrs. Follingsbee," said Mrs. Ferrola, "receptions in New
York generally begin about my bed-time; and, if I should spend the
night out, I should have no strength to give to my children the next
day."

"But, my dear, you ought to have some amusement."

"My children amuse me, if you will believe it," said Mrs. Ferrola,
with a remarkably quiet smile.

Mrs. Follingsbee was not quite