ctures then as they do now!--he said.--All
gone! all gone! nothing but her face as she leaned on the arms of her
great chair; and I would give a hundred pound for the poorest little
picture of her, such as you can buy for a shilling of anybody that you
don't want to see.--The old gentleman put his hand to his forehead so as
to shade his eyes. I saw he was looking at the dim photograph of memory,
and turned from him to Iris.

How many drawing-books have you filled,--I said,--since you began to
take lessons?--This was the first,--she answered,--since she was here;
and it was not full, but there were many separate sheets of large size
she had covered with drawings.

I turned over the leaves of the book before us. Academic studies,
principally of the human figure. Heads of sibyls, prophets, and so
forth. Limbs from statues. Hands and feet from Nature. What a superb
drawing of an arm! I don't remember it among the figures from Michel
Angelo, which seem to have been her patterns mainly. From Nature, I
think, or after a cast from Nature.--Oh!

--Your smaller studies are in this, I suppose,--I said, taking up the
drawing-book with a lock on it,--Yes,--she said.--I should like to see
her style of working on a small scale.--There was nothing in it worth
showing,--she said; and presently I saw her try the lock, which proved
to be fast. We are all caricatured in it, I haven't the least doubt.
I think, though, I could tell by her way of dealing with us what
her fancies were about us boarders. Some of them act as if they were
bewitched with her, but she does not seem to notice it much. Her
thoughts seem to be on her little neighbor more than on anybody else.
The young fellow John appears to stand second in her good graces. I
think he has once or twice sent her what the landlady's daughter calls
bo-kays of flowers,--somebody has, at any rate.--I saw a book she
had, which must have come from the divinity-student. It had a dreary
title-page, which she had enlivened with a fancy portrait of the
author,--a face from memory, apparently,--one of those faces that small
children loathe without knowing why, and which give them that inward
disgust for heaven so many of the little wretches betray, when they
hear that these are "good men," and that heaven is full of such.--The
gentleman with the diamond--the Koh-i-noor, so called by us--was not
encouraged, I think, by the reception of his packet of perfumed soap. He
pulls his purple moustache