the man. The cause of Harold's anxiety only came out later. It
was the wound he coveted, it seemed. He wanted to have a
big, sore wound of his very own, and go about and show it to
people, and excite their envy or win their respect. Charlotte
was only too pleased to take the child-angel seated at the lady's
feet, grappling with a musical instrument much too big for her.
Charlotte wanted wings badly, and, next to those, a guitar or a
banjo. The angel, besides, wore an amber necklace, which took
her fancy immensely.

This left the picture allotted, with the exception of two or
three more angels, who peeped or perched behind the main figures
with a certain subdued drollery in their faces, as if the thing
had gone on long enough, and it was now time to upset something
or kick up a row of some sort. We knew these good folk to be
saints and angels, because we had been told they were; otherwise
we should never have guessed it. Angels, as we knew them in
our Sunday books, were vapid, colourless, uninteresting
characters, with straight up-and-down sort of figures, white
nightgowns, white wings, and the same straight yellow hair parted
in the middle. They were serious, even melancholy; and we had no
desire to have any traffic with them. These bright bejewelled
little persons, however, piquant of face and radiant of feather,
were evidently hatched from quite a different egg, and we felt we
might have interests in common with them. Short-nosed, shock
headed, with mouths that went up at the corners and with an
evident disregard for all their fine clothes, they would be the
best of good company, we felt sure, if only we could manage to
get at them. One doubt alone disturbed my mind. In games
requiring agility, those wings of theirs would give them a