r to touch the knocker of his fortress again. But she entered into
her brother's scheme with the facile alacrity with which she usually
seconded any schemes of his proposing.

"I might teach her painting and embroidery," said Miss Emily, glancing,
with a satisfied air, at a framed piece of her own work which hung over
the mantelpiece, revealing the state of the fine arts in this country,
as exhibited in the performances of well-instructed young ladies of that
period. Miss Emily had performed it under the tuition of a celebrated
teacher of female accomplishments. It represented a white marble
obelisk, which an inscription, in legible India ink letters, stated to
be "Sacred to the memory of Theophilus Sewell," etc. This obelisk stood
in the midst of a ground made very green by an embroidery of different
shades of chenille and silk, and was overshadowed by an embroidered
weeping-willow. Leaning on it, with her face concealed in a plentiful
flow of white handkerchief, was a female figure in deep mourning,
designed to represent the desolate widow. A young girl, in a very black
dress, knelt in front of it, and a very lugubrious-looking young man,
standing bolt upright on the other side, seemed to hold in his hand one
end of a wreath of roses, which the girl was presenting, as an
appropriate decoration for the tomb. The girl and gentleman were, of
course, the young Theophilus and Miss Emily, and the appalling grief
conveyed by the expression of their faces was a triumph of the pictorial
art.

Miss Emily had in her bedroom a similar funeral trophy, sacred to the
memory of her deceased mother,--besides which there were, framed and
glazed, in the little sitting-room, two embroidered shepherdesses
standing with rueful faces, in charge of certain animals of an uncertain
breed between sheep and pigs. The poor little soul had mentally resolved
to make Mara the heiress of all the skill and knowledge of the arts by
which she had been enabled to consummate these marvels.

"She is naturally a lady-like little thing," she said to herself, "and
if I know anything of accomplishments, she shall have them."

Just about the time that Miss Emily came to this resolution, had she
been clairvoyant, she might have seen Mara sitting very quietly, busy in
the solitude of her own room with a little sprig of partridge-berry
before her, whose round green leaves and brilliant scarlet berries she
had been for hours trying to imitate, as appeared from t