stored up and arranged elegantly
on the shelves of his memory all the knowledge that was current, and a
little more besides.

When he was gone, Clary would meditate what powers of conversation he
had, and consider rather glumly how she would miss the portrait painter
when he migrated to his native air, the town; how dull Redwater would
be; how another face would soon supplant hers on the canvas! He had
shown her others in his portfolio quite as blooming and dignified,
though he had tumbled them carelessly over; and so he would treat hers
when another's was fresh before him. Clary would be restless and cross
at her own suppositions; for where is the use of being a beauty and a
wit if one must submit to be either forgotten or beaten, even by a
portrait painter?

In the meantime, the Vicar also wanted a _facsimile_ of his hayfield, as
it looked when the haymakers were among the tedded grass, or under the
Redwater ash-trees, to present him with a pleasant spectacle within, now
that the bleak autumn was coming on, and there would be nothing without
but soaked or battered ground, dark skies, and muddy or snowy ways. The
Mayor desired a pig-sty, with the most charming litter of little black
and white pigs, as nice as guinea-pigs, and their considerably coarser
grunting mamma, done to hand. He was a jolly, prosaic man, Master Mayor,
very proud of his prosaicness, as you rarely see a real man of his
poetry: he maintained, though Mrs. Mayor nearly swooned at the idea,
that he would sooner have a pig-sty than a batch of heroes. Perhaps the
heroes of Master Mayor's day had sometimes wallowed in the mire to
suggest the comparison. And Clarissa Gage would have her bower done--her
clematis bower before the leaves were brown and shrivelled and there
only remained the loving spindle-shanked stems clinging faithfully to
the half-rotten framework which they could no longer clothe with
verdure.

What a bower Will Locke made of Clary's bower! as unique as Sam
Winnington's portrait of Clary herself. It was not the literal bower;
and it would not have suited Master Mayor or the Justice, though it
might have had a charm for the Vicar. We will go with the Vicar;
although he also had his bombast, and, when elevated by company and
cheer, denominated Cambridge a goddess, and raised in the poor woman's
breast expectations never to be realized. We don't altogether approve
that wonderful bit of work, but we like it. There never were such deep
dam