ur--and the midday sun was darting and glittering through the
interstices of the trees, without supplying any effects of _chiaroscuro_
to a subject already defective in point and contrast--Eleanor was almost
in despair.

"Where's Jack?" said I, after condoling with her.

"He tried the birches for ten minutes, and then he went up the stream to
look for _algae_."

At this moment Jack appeared. He came slowly towards us, looking at
something in his hand.

"Lend me your magnifying-glass, Eleanor," said he, when he had reached
us.

Eleanor unfastened it from her chatelaine, and Jack became absorbed in
examining some water-weed in a dock-leaf.

"What is it?" said we.

"It's a new species, I believe. Look, Eleanor!" and he gave her the leaf
and the glass with an almost pathetic anxiety of countenance.

My opinion carried no weight in the matter, but Eleanor was nearly as
good a naturalist as her mother. And she was inclined to agree with
Jack.

"It's too good to be true! But I certainly don't know it. Where did you
find it?"

"No, thank you," said Jack derisively. "I mean to keep the habitat to
myself for the present. For _a very good reason_. Margery, my child, put
that sketch of mine into the pocket of your block. (The paper is much
about the size of your own!) It is going into the 'Household Album.'"

We went home earlier than we had intended. Even the perseverance of
Eleanor and Clement broke down under their ill-success. Jack was the
only well-satisfied one of the party, and, with his usual good-nature,
he tried hard to infect me with his cheerfulness.

"I think," said I, looking dolefully at my sketch, "that a good deal of
the fault must have been in my eyes. I suspect one can't see colours
properly when one is feeling sick and giddy. But the glare of the sun
was the worst. I couldn't tell red from green on my palette, so no
wonder the fields and everything else looked all the same colour. And
yet what provokes one is the feeling that an artist would have made a
sketch of it somehow. The view is really beautiful."

"And that is really beautiful," said Eleanor, pointing to the birch
group and its background. "And what a mess I have made of it! I wish I'd
stuck to pencil. And yet, as you say, an artist would have got a picture
out of it."

"I'll tell you what," said Jack, who was lying face downwards with my
picture spread before him, "I believe that any one who knew the dodges,
when he saw that everythi