“It’s a ruin,” said the captain; “done by Mrs. Chinnery.” The faded blue eyes behind the gold-rimmed spectacles inspected it carefully. “Done when she was a child—of course?” said Mrs. Willett. “Eighteen,” said Mrs. Chinnery, in a deep voice. “I’m no judge of such things,” said the old lady, shaking her head. “I only know what I like; but I dare say it’s very clever.” She turned to help herself from a plate that the captain was offering her, and, finding that it contained cake, said that she would prefer bread and butter. “Not that I don’t like cake,” she said. “As a rule I am rather partial to it.” “Well, have some now,” said the unfortunate captain, trying to avoid Mrs. Chinnery’s eye. “Bread and butter, please,” said Mrs. Willett, with quiet decision. The captain passed it, and after a hopeless glance at Mr. Truefitt and Miss Willett, who were deep in the enjoyment of each other’s society, returned to the subject of art. “If I could draw like that, ma’am,” he said, with a jerk of his head toward the ruined castle, “I should give up the sea.” Mrs. Willett inspected it again, even going to the length of taking off her glasses and polishing them, with a view to doing perfect justice to the subject. “Would you really?” she said, when she had finished. The captain made no reply. He sat appalled at the way in which the old lady was using him to pay off some of the debt that she fancied was due to Mrs. Chinnery. “You must see some of my daughter’s pictures,” she said, turning to him. “Fruit and birds mostly, in oil colours. But then, of course, she had good masters. There’s one picture—let me see!” She sat considering, and began to reel off the items on her fingers as she enumerated them. “There’s a plate of oranges, with a knife and fork, a glass, a bottle, two and a half walnuts and bits of shell, three-quarters of an apple, a pipe, a cigar, a bunch of grapes, and a green parrot looking at it all with his head on one side.” “And very natural of him, too,” murmured Mrs. Chinnery. “It’s coming here,” interposed Mr. Truefitt, suddenly. “It belongs to Mrs. Willett, but she has given it to us. I wonder which will be the best place for it?” The old lady looked round the room. “It will have to hang there,” she said, pointing to the “Eruption of Vesuvius,” “where that beehive is.” “Bee—!” exclaimed the startled captain. He bent toward her and explained. “Oh, well, it don’t matter,” said the old lady. “I thought it was a beehive—it looks like one; and I can’t see what’s written under it from here. But that’s where Cecilia’s picture must go.” She made one or two other suggestions with regard to the rearrangement of the pictures, and then, having put her hand to the plough, proceeded to refurnish the room. And for her own private purposes she affected to think that Mr. Truefitt’s taste was responsible for the window-curtains.