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THE BLUE ROOM nothing that I knew of to be bespattered with adjectives in this way. I had never thought of them as divine, unique, or anything else. They were—well, they were just themselves, and there was an end of it. Despairingly I jogged Edward in the ribs, as a sign to start rational conversation, but he only grinned and continued obdurate.

'You can see the house now,' I remarked presently; 'and that's Selina, chasing the donkey in the paddock. Or is it the donkey chasing Selina? I can't quite make out; but it's them, anyhow.'

Needless to say, he exploded with a full charge of adjectives. 'Exquisite!' he rapped out; 'so mellow and harmonious! and so entirely in keeping!' (I could see from Edward's face that he was thinking who ought to be in keeping.) 'Such possibilities of romance, now, in those old gables!'

'If you mean the garrets,' I said, 'there's a lot of old furniture in them; and one is generally full of apples; and the bats get in sometimes, under the eaves, and flop about till we go up 209