I picked it up tenderly, and laid it on my writing-table.
"Carlotta," said I, "the first thing you have to learn here is that books in England are more precious than babies in Alexandretta.

If you pitch them about in this fashion you will murder them and I shall have you hanged." This checked her sumptuary excitement.

It gave her food for reflection, and she stood humbly penitent, while I went further into the subject of clothes.
"In fact," I concluded, "you will be dressed like a lady." She opened the book at a gaudy picture, "_France, XVI( ieme) Siecle--Saltimbanque et Bohemmienne_," and pointed to the female mountebank.

This young person wore a bright green tunic, bordered with gold and finished off at the elbows and waist with red, over an undergown of flaring pink, the sleeves of which reached her wrist; she was crowned with red and white carnations stuck in ivy.
"I will get a dress like that," said Carlotta.
I wondered how far Mrs.McMurray possessed the colour-sense, and I trembled.

I tried to explain gently to Carlotta the undesirability of such a costume for outdoor wear in London; but with tastes there is no disputing, and I saw that she was but half-convinced.