Things only went right for a little time. Though beautiful without and within, Mrs. Elliot had not the gift of making her home beautiful; and one day, when she bought a carpet for the dining-room that clashed, he laughed gently, said he “really couldn’t,” and departed. Departure is perhaps too strong a word. In Mrs. Elliot’s mouth it became, “My husband has to sleep more in town.” He often came down to see them, nearly always unexpectedly, and occasionally they went to see him. “Father’s house,” as Rickie called it, only had three rooms, but these were full of books and pictures and flowers; and the flowers, instead of being squashed down into the vases as they were in mummy’s house, rose gracefully from frames of lead which lay coiled at the bottom, as doubtless the sea serpent has to lie, coiled at the bottom of the sea. Once he was let to lift a frame out—only once, for he dropped some water on a creton. “I think he’s going to have taste,” said Mr. Elliot languidly. “It is quite possible,” his wife replied. She had not taken off her hat and gloves, nor even pulled up her veil. Mr. Elliot laughed, and soon afterwards another lady came in, and they—went away. “Why does father always laugh?” asked Rickie in the evening when he and his mother were sitting in the nursery. “It is a way of your father’s.” “Why does he always laugh at me? Am I so funny?” Then after a pause, “You have no sense of humour, have you, mummy?” Mrs. Elliot, who was raising a thread of cotton to her lips, held it suspended in amazement. “You told him so this afternoon. But I have seen you laugh.” He nodded wisely. “I have seen you laugh ever so often. One day you were laughing alone all down in the sweet peas.” “Was I?” “Yes. Were you laughing at me?” “I was not thinking about you. Cotton, please—a reel of No. 50 white from my chest of drawers. Left hand drawer. Now which is your left hand?” “The side my pocket is.” “And if you had no pocket?” “The side my bad foot is.” “I meant you to say, ‘the side my heart is,’” said Mrs. Elliot, holding up the duster between them. “Most of us—I mean all of us—can feel on one side a little watch, that never stops ticking. So even if you had no bad foot you would still know which is the left. No. 50 white, please. No; I’ll get it myself.” For she had remembered that the dark passage frightened him.