About a yard deep above the wainscot
this was covered with a dark sombre green tint, and along the upper edge
of this, as a border all round the room, the school-mistress had painted
a trailing wreath of white periwinkle. The border was painted with the
same materials as the walls, and with very rapid touches. The white
flowers were skilfully relieved by the dark ground, and the varied tints
of the leaves, from the deep evergreen of the old ones to the pale
yellow of the young shoots, had demanded no new colours, and were
wonderfully life-like and pretty. There was another border, right round
the top of the room; but that was painted on paper and fastened on. It
was a Bible text--"Keep Innocency, and take heed to the thing that is
right, for that shall bring a man Peace at the last." And Mrs. Wood had
done the text also.
There were no curtains to the broad, mullioned window, which was kept
wide open at every lattice; and one long shoot of ivy that had pushed in
farther than the rest had been seized, and pinned to the wall inside,
where its growth was a subject of study and calculation, during the many
moments when we were "trying to see" how little we could learn of our
lessons.
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