ding over
this long time; until I was ashamed of myself and my own presumption."

"Your presumption!"

"Yes; because I have sometimes thought my drawings were not so very,
very bad; and I love Art so dearly, I would give anything in the world
to be an artist!"

"You draw! You long to be an artist!" It was the only thing wanted to
make Olive quite perfect in Meliora's eyes. She jumped up, and embraced
her young favourite with the greatest enthusiasm. "I knew this was in
you. All good people must have a love for Art. And you shall have
your desire, for my brother shall teach you. I must go and tell him
directly."

But Olive resisted, for her poor little heart began to quake. What
if her long-loved girlish dreams should be quenched at once--if Mr.
Vanbrugh's stern dictum should be that she had no talent, and never
could become an artist at all!

"Well, then, don't be frightened, my dear girl. Let me see your
sketches. I do know a little about such things, though Michael thinks I
don't," said Miss Meliora.

And Olive, her cheeks tingling with that sensitive emotion which makes
many a young artist, or poet, shrink in real agony, when the crude
first-fruits of his genius are brought to light--Olive stood by, while
the painter's kind little sister turned over a portfolio filled with a
most heterogeneous mass of productions.

Their very oddity showed the spirit of Art that dictated them. There
were no pretty, well-finished, young-ladyish sketches of tumble-down
cottages, and trees whose species no botanist could ever define;--or
smooth chalk heads, with very tiny mouths, and very crooked noses.
Olive's productions were all as rough as rough could be; few even
attaining to the dignity of drawing-paper. They were done on backs of
letters, or any sort of scraps: and comprised numberless pen-and-ink
portraits of the one beautiful face, dearest to the daughter's
heart--rude studies, in charcoal, of natural objects--outlines, from
memory, of pictures she had seen, among which Meliora's eye proudly
discerned several of Mr. Vanbrugh's; while, scattered here and there,
were original pencil designs, ludicrously voluminous, illustrating
nearly every poet, living or dead.

Michael Vanbrugh's sister was not likely to be quite ignorant of Art.
Indeed, she had quietly gathered up a tolerable critical knowledge of
it. She went through the portfolio, making remarks here and there. At
last she closed it; but with a look so beamingly e