“He need not have much of him, and I believe he would prefer to have him under his own eye; and Anna will think it bliss to have him, though what it may prove is another question. She will keep you from being too much bothered.” “My dear Lance, will you never understand, that as furze and thistles are to a donkey, so are shabbiness and bother to me--a native element?” In the morning Clement, raised on his pillows in bed, showed himself highly grateful for the proposal about his youngest ward. “It is very good of you, Cherry,” he said. “That poor boy has been very much on my mind. This is the way to profit by my enforced leisure.” “That’s the way to make me dread him. You were to lie fallow.” “Not exactly. I have thirteen or fourteen years’ reading and thinking to make up. I have done no more than get up a thing cursorily since I left Vale Leston.” “You are welcome to read and think, provided it is nothing more recent than St. Chrysostom.” “So here is the letter to Alda,” giving it to her open. “Short and to the purpose,” she said. “Alda submits to the inevitable,” he said. “Don’t appear as if she had a choice.” “Only mention the alleviations. No, you are not to get up yet. There’s no place for you to sit in, and the east wind is not greatly mitigated by the sea air. Shall I send Anna to read to you?” “In half-an-hour, if she is ready then; meantime, those two books, if you please.” She handed him his Greek Testament and Bishop Andrews, and repaired to the drawing-room, where she found Anna exulting in the decorations brought from home, and the flowers brought in from an itinerant barrow. “I have been setting down what they must send us from home--your own chair and table, and the Liberty rugs, and the casts of St. Cecilia and little St. Cyrillus for those bare corners, and I am going out for a terra-cotta vase.” “Oh, my dear, the room is charming; but don’t let us get too dependent on pretty things. They demoralize as much or more than ugly ones.” “Do you mean that they are a luxury? Is it not right to try to have everything beautiful?” “I don’t know, my dear.” “Don’t know!” exclaimed Anna. “Yes, my dear, I really get confused sometimes as to what is mere lust of the eye, and what is regard to whatever things are lovely. I believe the principle is really in each case to try whether the high object or the gratification of the senses should stand first.” “Well,” said Anna, laughing, “I suppose it is a high object not to alienate Gerald, as would certainly be done by the culture of the ugly--” “Or rather of that which pretends to be the reverse, and is only fashion,” said her aunt, who meantime was moving about, adding nameless grace by her touch to all Anna’s arrangements. “May I send for the things then?” said Anna demurely.