Company, the original designs for the dresses in "A Wife's Secret"; while over the mantel-board are Mr. and Mrs. Kendal in "The Ironmaster," and many family portraits are about.
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"It is so amusing to hear people talk and write about my eldest brother Tom and me playing together as children," she said. "My mother was married when she was eighteen, and my brother was born when she was nineteen; I was born when she was forty-eight, and was her twenty-second child! So my brother was a grown man with a moustache when I knew him. I was brought up with his two children—little Tom and Maude, my own nephew and niece."
What a delightful story it was! Little Madge Robertson used to dress up as a policeman and take Maude into custody before Tom, the younger, as the judge. And this was the trial:—
"What is the prisoner charged with, constable?" asked the judge.
"Murder, my lord," replied the representative of law and order.
"Prisoner, are you guilty?"
"Yes, my lord," answered the poor prisoner.
"Prisoner, have you anything to say why sentence should not be passed upon you according to law?"
"Yes, my lord. I'm the daughter of the author of 'Caste.'"
The prisoner always got off, and dear old William Robertson would watch this little scene and roar with laughter.
"Yes," Mrs. Kendal said quietly, as we again looked at "Tom's" picture, "my brother was kindness itself, even from his infancy. I remember hearing how, when he was a very small boy and living with his aunt, he went out one summer's day with a new velvet jacket on. He caught sight of a poor little beggar child his own size, who was in tatters, and, beckoning him across, at once divested himself of his new coat, put it on the wondering youngster, and ran away home as fast as he could. His aunt questioned him, and upon finding out the true circumstances of the case, and not wishing to damp the kind spirit in the little fellow's heart, said:—
"Well, we'll go and try to find the boy you gave it to, and buy your jacket back.'
"Fortunately the search was successful, and the coat was bought back for no less a sum than half-a-sovereign.
"And in later years it was just the same with Tom. He could never pass by a common cookshop, in front of the windows of which was often a crowd of men, women, and children, looking on with longing eyes, without getting them inside and giving them a fill to their hearts' content. When out driving it was no different. He would stop the horse, and have all the watching hungry ones inside, and the next moment they would be revelling in the satisfying properties of thick slices of plum-pudding and roast beef."
The house throughout is most artistic. Mr. Kendal is a painter of great merit, and he "knows" a picture as soon as he sees it. Pictures are his hobby; hence there is not a room in the house—even to the kitchen—which does not find a place for some canvas, etching, or engraving. The entrance-hall is at once striking, with its quaint thirteenth century furniture, bronzes, and Venetian ware, There are some fine engravings of
