ITS WALLS WERE AS OF JASPER

In the long winter evenings, when we had the picture-books out on
the floor, and sprawled together over them with elbows deep in
the hearth-rug, the first business to be gone through was the
process of allotment. All the characters in the pictures had to
be assigned and dealt out among us, according to seniority, as
far as they would go. When once that had been satisfactorily
completed, the story was allowed to proceed; and thereafter, in
addition to the excitement of the plot, one always possessed a
personal interest in some particular member of the cast, whose
successes or rebuffs one took as so much private gain or loss.

For Edward this was satisfactory enough. Claiming his right of
the eldest, he would annex the hero in the very
frontispiece; and for the rest of the story his career, if
chequered at intervals, was sure of heroic episodes and a
glorious close. But his juniors, who had to put up with
characters of a clay more mixed--nay, sometimes with undiluted
villainy--were hard put to it on occasion to defend their other
selves (as it was strict etiquette to do) from ignominy perhaps
only too justly merited. Edward was indeed a hopeless grabber.
In the "Buffalo-book," for instance (so named from the subject of
its principal picture, though indeed it dealt with varied
slaughter in every zone), Edward was the stalwart, bearded
figure, with yellow leggings and a powder-horn, who undauntedly
discharged the fatal bullet into the shoulder of the great bull
bison, charging home to within a yard of his muzzle. To me was
allotted the subsidiary character of the friend who had succeeded