THE CALICO PAPER. 185

don’t make up some calico wrappers before long, I shall have
to tie myself into a pillow-case; and if I don’t read Froude’s
History, and begin Grote, and finish The Excursion, I shall
become a raving imbecile before winter. Besides, — well,
no, I believe that’s all.”

Perhaps it was from there being so many things to do that
it was harder to know where to begin than not to do at all;
or, perhaps, because we were half sad to have been half glad
that mother was gone; but at all events, when Alta said the
next morning, “I know another thing I mean to do,” and I
asked, “ What now?” and she said, ‘‘ We ’ll paper mother’s
room before she comes back. Well do it pretty soon. On
the whole, we “Il do it to-morrow. No, we won’t, we ’ll do it
to-day, Mari,” it seemed to us both at once the most delight-
ful thing to do it in all the world, and so much the most
important, that we ran in in our wrappers, as soon as we heard
_ father go down, to see about it.

“It’s such an ugly paper,” said Alta, “I always thought
it accounted for the babies in our family having so much colic.
Any baby of good taste would cry to lie and look at it for two
years.”

It was the ugliest paper! First, there was green sky ; then
came a blue rose-bush as tall as a poplar-tree; a pink river
ran under it, with a lavender bridge; there was a yellow
woman on the bridge, and the greenest man fishing in a black
boat which was sailing, stern-foremost, into a wreath of
potato-blossoms and tiger-lilies. The whole was netted in