ers, while cakes of lake
and Prussian blue adhered to the drawing-board.

'The colour-box is probably in the walnut-press; but I advise you not
to irritate that yet. Let me see that drawing, the design for the
cottages that Frampton nipped in the bud--'

'How pretty and comfortable they do look!' exclaimed Mary, pleased to
come to something that was within her sphere of comprehension. 'If they
were but finished!'

'Ah! I thought of them when I was lying there in the dell! Had they
been allowed to stand where I wanted them, there would have been no
lack of people going home from work; but, 'Quite impracticable' came in
my way, and I had no heart to finish the drawing.'

'What a pity!' exclaimed Mary.

'This was Richardson's veto, two degrees worse than Frampton's; and I
shall never be able to abuse Frampton again. I have seen him in his
true light now, and never was any one more kind and considerate. Ha,
Mary, what's that?'

'It looks like a rainbow in convulsions.'

'Now, Mary, did not I tell you that I could not laugh? It is a diagram
to illustrate the theory of light for Clara.'

'Does she understand _that_?' cried Mary.

'Clara? She understands anything but going to school--poor child! Yes,
burn that map of the strata,--not that--it is to be a painted window
whenever I can afford one, but I never could make money stay with me.
I never could think why--'

The _why_ was evident enough in the heterogeneous mass--crumpled
prints, blank drawing-paper, and maps heaped ruinously over and under
books, stuffed birds, geological specimens, dislocated microscopes,
pieces of Roman pavement, curiosities innumerable and indescribable;
among which roamed blotting-books, memorandum-books, four pieces of
Indian rubber, three pair of compasses, seven paper-knives, ten knives,
thirteen odd gloves, fifteen pencils, pens beyond reckoning, a purse, a
key, half a poem on the Siege of Granada, three parts of an essay upon
Spade Husbandry, the dramatis personae of a tragedy on Queen
Brunehault, scores of old letters, and the dust of three years and a
half.

Louis owned that the arrangements conduced to finding rather than
losing, and rejoiced at the disinterment of his long-lost treasures;
but either he grew weary, or the many fragments, the ghosts of departed
fancies, made him thoughtful; for he became silent, and only watched
and smiled as Mary quietly and noiselessly completed her reforms, and
arranged table and cha