“Now, I should think,” pursued Mrs. Follingsbee, “that a woman who really loved her husband would be thankful to have him have such a rest from the disturbing family cares which smother a man’s genius, as a house like ours offers him. How can the artistic nature exercise itself in the very grind of the thing, when this child has a cold, and the other the croup; and there is fussing with mustard-paste and ipecac and paregoric,—all those realities, you know? Why, Charlie tells me he feels a great deal more affection for his children when he is all calm and tranquil in the little boudoir at our house; and he writes such lovely little poems about them, I must show you some of them. But this creature doesn’t appreciate them a bit: she has no poetry in her.” “Well, I must say, I don’t think I should have,” said Lillie, honestly. “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.” “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.”