paper. "Oh, confound it, I've broken the chalk!"

"Of course you have," retorted Valentine. "Take another bit; the Academy
grants supplementary chalk to ignorant students, who dig their lines
on the paper, instead of drawing them. Now, break off a bit of that
bread-crumb, and rub out what you have done. 'Buy a penny loaf, and rub
it all out,' as Mr. Fuseli once said to me in the Schools of the
Royal Academy, when I showed him my first drawing, and was excessively
conceited about it."

"I remember," said Mrs. Blyth, "when my father was working at his great
engraving, from Mr. Scumble's picture of the 'Fair Gleaner Surprised,'
that he used often to say how much harder his art was than drawing,
because you couldn't rub out a false line on copper, like you could on
paper. We all thought he never would get that print done, he used to
groan over it so in the front drawing-room, where he was then at work.
And the publishers paid him infamously, all in bills, which he had to
get discounted; and the people who gave him the money cheated him. My
mother said it served him right for being always so imprudent; which I
thought very hard on him, and I took his part--so harassed too as he was
by the tradespeople at that time."

"I can feel for him, my love," said Valentine, pointing a piece of chalk
for Zack. "The tradespeople have harassed _me_--not because I could not
pay them certainly, but because I could not add up their bills. Never
owe any man enough, Zack, to give him the chance of punishing you for
being in his debt, with a sum to do in simple addition. At the time when
I had bills (go on with your drawing; you can listen, and draw too), I
used, of course, to think it necessary to check the tradespeople, and
see that their Total was right. You will hardly believe me, but I don't
remember ever making the sum what the shop made it, on more than about
three occasions. And, what was worse, if I tried a second time, I could
not even get it to agree with what I had made it myself the first time.
Thank Heaven, I've no difficulties of that sort to grapple with now!
Everything's paid for the moment it comes in. If the butcher hands a leg
of mutton to the cook over the airey railings, the cook hands him back
six and nine--or whatever it is--and takes his bill and receipt. I eat
my dinners now, with the blessed conviction that they won't all disagree
with me in an arithmetical point of view at the end of the year. What
are you stoppin