to find was a new
species, and threw Mrs. Arkwright and Eleanor into a state of the
highest excitement. But all their entreaties failed to persuade Jack to
disclose the secret of the habitat.

"Put my sketch into the 'Household Album,' and I'll tell you all about
it," said he.

Mrs. Arkwright held out against this for half-an-hour. Then she gave
way. Jack's sketch was gummed in (it took up a whole page, being the
full size of my block), and he told us all about the water-weed.

It was described and figured in the _Phycological Quarterly_, and
received the specific name of _Arkwrightii_, and Jack's double triumph
was complete.

We were very glad for his success, but it almost increased the sense of
disappointment that our share of the expedition had been so unlucky.

"It seems such a waste," said I, "to have got to such a lovely place
with one's drawing things and plenty of time, and to come away without a
sketch worth keeping at the end, just because one doesn't know the right
way of working."

"I think there's a good deal in what Jack said about your sketch," said
Eleanor; "and I think if one looked at the way real artists have treated
similar subjects, and then went at it again and tried to do it on a
similar principle----"

"If ever we do go there again," Clement interrupted, "but I don't
suppose we shall--these holidays. And the way summer after summer slips
away is awful. I'm more and more convinced that it's a great mistake to
have so many hobbies. No life is long enough for more than one pursuit,
and it's ten to one you die in the middle of mastering that. One is sure
to die in the early stages of half-a-dozen."

Clement is very apt to develop some odd theory of this kind, and to
preach it with a severity that borders on gloom. I never know what to
say, even if I disagree with him; but Eleanor takes up the cudgels at
once.

"I don't think I agree with you," she said, giving a shove to her soft
elastic hair which did not improve the indefiniteness of the parting.
"Of course it's unsatisfactory in one way to feel one will never live to
finish things, but in another way I think it's a great comfort to feel
one can never use them up or outlive them if one lasts on to be a
hundred. And though one gets very cross and miserable with failing so
over things one works at, I don't know whether one would be so much
happier when one was at the top of the tree. I'm not sure that the
chief pleasure isn't actually in