Only Fred was missing; except the dear father who lay in the quiet churchyard near Combe Manor; but we had bright, satisfactory letters from him, and hoped that on the whole he was doing well. We talked of him a good deal, and then it was that Dot announced his grand purpose of being an artist. "When I am a man," he finished, in a serious voice, "I mean to work harder than Fred, and paint great big pictures, and perhaps some grand nobleman will buy them of me." "I wonder what your first subject will be, Frankie?" asked Allan, in a slightly amused voice. He was turning over Dot's scrap-book, and was looking at the Tower of Babel in a puzzled way. "The Retreat of the Ten Thousand under Xenophon," was the perfectly startling answer, at which Allan opened his eyes rather widely, and Uncle Geoffrey laughed. Dot looked injured and a little cross. "People always laugh when I want to talk sense," he said, rather loftily. "Never mind, Frankie, we won't laugh any more," returned Allan, eager to soothe his favorite; "it is a big subject, but you have plenty of years to work it out in, and after all the grand thing in me is to aim high." Which speech, being slightly unintelligible, mollified Dot's wrath. CHAPTER XXII. ALLAN AND I WALK TO ELTHAM GREEN. The next great event in our family annals was Carrie's first appearance downstairs. Uncle Geoffrey had long wished her to make the effort, but she had made some excuse and put it off from day to day; but at last Allan took it into his head to manage things after his usual arbitrary fashion, and one afternoon he marched into the room, and, quietly lifting Carrie in his arms, as though she were a baby, desired me to follow with, her crutches, while he carried her downstairs. Carrie trembled a good deal, and turned very white, but she offered no remonstrance; and when Allan put her down outside the parlor door, she took her crutches from me in a patient uncomplaining way that touched us both. I always said we ought to have prepared Dot, but Allan would not hear of my telling him; but when the door opened and Carrie entered, walking slowly and painfully, being still unused to her crutches, we were all startled by a loud cry from Dot. "She is like me! Oh, poor, poor Carrie!" cried the little fellow, with a sob; and he broke into such a fit of crying that mother was quite upset. It was in vain we tried to soothe him; that Carrie drew him toward her with trembling arms and kissed him, and whispered that it was God's will, and she did not mind so very much now; he only kept repeating, "She is like me--oh, dear--oh dear! she is like me," in a woe-begone little voice. Dot was so sensitive that I feared the shock would make him ill, but Allan came at last to the rescue. He had been called out of the room for a moment, and came back to find a scene of dire confusion--it took so little to upset mother, and really it was heartbreaking to all of us to see the child's grief.