moved into Creeper Cottage they were objects of the intensest
interest to the entire country side, and the report of their riches,
their recklessness, and their eccentric choice of a dwelling had
rolled over the intervening hills as far as Minehead, where it was the
subject of many interesting comments in the local papers.

They got into their cottage about tea time; and the first thing
Priscilla did was to exclaim at the pleasant sight of the wood fire
and sit down in the easy-chair to warm herself. We know who was
sitting in it already; and thus she was received by Bad Luck at once
into her very lap, and clutched about securely by that unpleasant
lady's cold and skinny arms. She looked up at Fritzing with a shiver
to remark wonderingly that the room, in spite of its big fire and its
smallness, was like ice, but her lips fell apart in a frozen stare and
she gazed blankly past him at the wall behind his head. "Look," she
whispered, pointing with a horrified forefinger. And Fritzing, turning
quickly, was just in time to snatch a row of cheap coloured portraits
from the wall and fling them face downwards under the table before
Tussie came in to ask if he could do anything.

The portraits were those of all the reigning princes of Germany and
had been put up as a delicate compliment by the representative of the
Minehead furnishers, while Priscilla and Fritzing were taking leave of
Baker's Farm; and the print Priscilla's eye had lighted on was the
portrait of her august parent, smiling at her. He was splendid in
state robes and orders, and there was a charger, and an obviously
expensive looped-up curtain, and much smoke as of nations furiously
raging together in the background, and outside this magnificence
meandered the unmeaning rosebuds of Priscilla's cheap wallpaper. His
smile seemed very terrible under the circumstances. Fritzing felt
this, and seized him and flung him with a desperate energy under the
table, where he went on smiling, as Priscilla remembered with a guilty
shudder, at nothing but oilcloth. "I don't believe I'll sleep if I
know he--he's got nothing he'd like better than oilcloth to look at,"
she whispered with an awestruck face to Fritzing as Tussie came in.

"I will cause them all to be returned," Fritzing assured her.

"What, have those people sent wrong things?" asked Tussie anxiously,
who felt that the entire responsibility of this _menage_ was on his
shoulders.

"Oh, only some cheap prints," sai