Thus, when her husband returned, he found the room littered with Kindergarten toys, while Adam was threading beads by the multiplication table, and Eve was busily engaged in marking the course of the River Congo in red back-stitching on a remarkably black continent of Africa, which was afterwards to do duty as a kettleholder. Blasius, meanwhile, having been so far beguiled into the Zeit-Geist as to consent to build a puff-puff out of some real terra-cotta bricks and columns which were intended for an architectural object lesson. "Oh, George!" began his wife, pausing with a lump of sugar in the tongs over his cup, "Paul's widow is dreadful; I don't know what I shall do with her." "Hand her over to me--I can generally manage to get on with people," he said, watching the tongs greedily; for the question of sugar in his tea was the cause of much dispute between him and his wife. A slow smile came to her face as she replaced the lump. "No! my dear; it wouldn't be good for you," she said, coming back to the present, and then she frowned. "I cannot think what induced Paul to ask her just when so much depends on the Woodwards feeling themselves to be _the_ guests _par excellence_," she continued, after a brief but picturesque description of the offender. "And this woman is sure to sing, and play, and dance, and act. I saw it in her face." "Jolly sort of person to have in a country house, I should say," remarked her husband, secretly impressed. "I knew _you_ would say that, George," put in his wife, resignedly. "Yes! she is just the sort of woman men love to dangle round." "Then ask someone to dangle. That will leave the coast clear for Paul and Miss Woodward." Lady George raised her eyebrows scornfully. "As if that would do any good! That sort of woman always insists on having the best men, and Paul looks that in most society; besides I don't feel called upon to pave the way to an heiress for anyone else but my brother. That is what it would come to. No! I cannot conceive why Paul should make things so--so much more difficult for himself." "Natural depravity, my dear," suggested her husband, helping himself on the sly to sugar. "There is such a thing--Hullo! what's that?" That was the sudden discovery on Blazes' part that an Ionic column, when used as an engine funnel, would, if hit violently with a good, squat Norman one, break off in the middle; a discovery which was followed by an outburst of that craze for destruction which healthy children display on the least provocation. "He--he is not a 'Kindergarten' child," remarked his mother, plaintively, when after a time the upstairs bell had once more been rung and the offender carried off shrieking amid awed whispers of intense enjoyment, about "welly welly naughty little boys" from Adam and Eve.