I think we'll have coconut matting next time.

A carpet doesn't have an easy life of it in this room, does it ?' 'It's not our fault, mother, is it, that our boots are the really reliable kind ?' Robert asked the question more in sorrow than in anger.
'No, dear, we can't help our boots,' said mother, cheerfully, 'but we might change them when we come in, perhaps.

It's just an idea of mine.
I wouldn't dream of scolding on the very first morning after I've come home.

Oh, my Lamb, how could you ?' This conversation was at breakfast, and the Lamb had been beautifully good until every one was looking at the carpet, and then it was for him but the work of a moment to turn a glass dish of syrupy blackberry jam upside down on his young head.

It was the work of a good many minutes and several persons to get the jam off him again, and this interesting work took people's minds off the carpet, and nothing more was said just then about its badness as a bargain and about what mother hoped for from coconut matting.
When the Lamb was clean again he had to be taken care of while mother rumpled her hair and inked her fingers and made her head ache over the difficult and twisted house-keeping accounts which cook gave her on dirty bits of paper, and which were supposed to explain how it was that cook had only fivepence-half-penny and a lot of unpaid bills left out of all the money mother had sent her for house-keeping.