nxious
compassion at the sight of anybody's tears. But Olive's only flowed the
faster--she being in truth extremely miserable. For this day her mother
had sorrowfully alluded to Mr. Gwynne's claim, and had begun to propose
many little personal sacrifices on her own part, which grieved her
affectionate daughter to the heart.

Meliora made vain efforts at comforting, and then, as a last resource,
she went and fetched two little kittens and laid them on Olive's lap by
way of consolation; for her own delight and solace was in her household
menagerie, from which she was ever evolving great future blessings. She
had always either a cat so beautiful, that when sent to Edwin Landseer,
it would certainly produce a revolution in the subjects of his
animal-pictures--or else a terrier so bewitching, that she intended to
present it to her then girlish, dog-loving Majesty, thereby causing a
shower of prosperity to fall upon the household of Vanbrugh.

Olive dried her tears, and stroked the kittens--her propensity for such
pets was not her lightest merit in Meliora's eyes. Then she suffered
herself to be tenderly soothed into acknowledging that she was very
unhappy.

"I'll not ask you why, my dear, because Michael used to tell me I had
far too much of feminine curiosity. I only meant, could I comfort you in
any way?"

There was something so unobtrusive in her sympathy, that Olive felt
inclined to open her heart to the gentle Meliora. "I can't tell you
all," said she, "I think it would be not quite right;" and, trembling
and hesitating, as if even the confession indicated something of shame,
she whispered her longing for that great comfort, money of her own
earning.

"You, my dear, you want money!" cried Miss Meliora, who had always
looked upon her new inmate, Mrs. Rothesay, as a sort of domestic
gold-mine. But she had the delicacy not to press Olive further.

"I do. I can't tell you why, but it is for a good--a holy purpose--Oh,
Miss Vanbrugh, if you could but show me any way of earning money for
myself! Think for me--you, who know so much more of the world than I."

--Which truth did not at all disprove the fact, that innocent little
Meliora was a very child in worldly wisdom. She proved it by her next
sentence, delivered oracularly after some minutes of hard cogitation.
"My dear, there is but one way to gain wealth and prosperity. If you had
but a taste for Art!"

Olive looked up eagerly. "Ah, that is what I have been broo