bright clean colour to enforce the simple lines of construction. "Clean
colours we _must_ have," said Redwood, and in one place had a neat
horizontal band of squares, in which crimson and purple, orange and
lemon, blues and greens, in many hues and many shades, did themselves
honour. These squares the giant children should arrange and rearrange to
their pleasure. "Decorations must follow," said Redwood; "let them first
get the range of all the tints, and then this may go away. There is no
reason why one should bias them in favour of any particular colour or
design."

Then, "The place must be full of interest," said Redwood. "Interest is
food for a child, and blankness torture and starvation. He must have
pictures galore." There were no pictures hung about the room for any
permanent service, however, but blank frames were provided into which
new pictures would come and pass thence into a portfolio so soon as
their fresh interest had passed. There was one window that looked down
the length of a street, and in addition, for an added interest, Redwood
had contrived above the roof of the nursery a camera obscura that
watched the Kensington High Street and not a little of the Gardens.

In one corner that most worthy implement, an Abacus, four feet square, a
specially strengthened piece of ironmongery with rounded corners,
awaited the young giants' incipient computations. There were few woolly
lambs and such-like idols, but instead Cossar, without explanation, had
brought one day in three four-wheelers a great number of toys (all just
too big for the coming children to swallow) that could be piled up,
arranged in rows, rolled about, bitten, made to flap and rattle, smacked
together, felt over, pulled out, opened, closed, and mauled and
experimented with to an interminable extent. There were many bricks of
wood in diverse colours, oblong and cuboid, bricks of polished china,