to
learn? figures, flowers, or landscape?"

"Oh! all three," replied Mrs. Atmore. "We have been furnishing our new
house, and I told Mr. Atmore that he need not get any pictures for the
front parlor, as I would much prefer having them all painted by
Marianne. She has been four quarters with Miss Julia, and has worked
Friendship and Innocence, which cost, altogether, upwards of a hundred
dollars. Do you know the piece, Mr. Gummage? There is a tomb with a
weeping willow, and two ladies with long hair, one dressed in pink, the
other in blue, holding a wreath between them over the top of the urn.
The ladies are Friendship. Then on the right hand of the piece is a
cottage, and an oak, and a little girl dressed in yellow, sitting on a
green bank, and putting a wreath round the neck of a lamb. Nothing can
be more natural than the lamb's wool. It is done entirely in French
knots. The child and the lamb are Innocence."

"Ay, ay," said Gummage, "I know the piece well enough--I've drawn them
by dozens."

"Well," continued Mrs. Atmore, "this satin piece hangs over the front
parlor mantel. It is much prettier and better done than the one Miss
Longstitch worked of Charlotte at the tomb of Werter, though she did sew
silver spangles all over Charlotte's lilac gown, and used chenille, at a
fi'-penny-bit a needleful, for all the banks and the large tree. Now, as
the mantel-piece is provided for, I wish a landscape for each of the
recesses, and a figure-piece to hang on each side of the large
looking-glass, with flower-pieces under them, all by Marianne. Can she
do all these in one quarter?"

"No, that she can't," replied Gummage; "it will take her two quarters
hard work, and maybe three, to get through the whole of them."

"Well, I won't stand about a quarter more or less," said Mrs. Atmore;
"but what I wish Marianne to do most particularly, and, indeed, the
chief reason why I send her to drawing-school just now, is a pattern for
a set of china that we are going to have made in Canton. I was told the
other day by a New York lady (who was quite tired of the queer unmeaning
things which are generally put on India ware), that she had sent a
pattern for a tea-set, drawn by her daughter, and that every article
came out with the identical device beautifully done on the china, all in
the proper colors. She said it was talked of all over New York, and that
people who had never been at the house before, came to look at and
admire it. No dou