ested in pictures,
and that it would be a pretty attention, on his part, to paint her a
landscape to hang up in her room. Owen brightens directly, informs me in
his softest tones that he is then at work on the Earthquake at Lisbon,
and inquires whether I think she would like that subject. I preserve
my gravity sufficiently to answer in the affirmative, and my brother
retires meekly to his studio, to depict the engulfing of a city and the
destruction of a population. Morgan withdraws in his turn to the top of
the tower, threatening, when our guest comes, to draw all his meals up
to his new residence by means of a basket and string. I am left alone
for an hour, and then the upholsterer arrives from the county town.

This worthy man, on being informed of our emergency, sees his way,
apparently, to a good stroke of business, and thereupon wins my lasting
gratitude by taking, in opposition to every one else, a bright and
hopeful view of existing circumstances.

"You'll excuse me, sir," he says, confidentially, when I show him the
rooms in the lean-to, "but this is a matter of experience. I'm a family
man myself, with grown-up daughters of my own, and the natures of young
women are well known to me. Make their rooms comfortable, and you make
'em happy. Surround their lives, sir, with a suitable atmosphere of
furniture, and you never hear a word of complaint drop from their lips.
Now, with regard to these rooms, for example, sir--you put a neat French
bedstead in that corner, with curtains conformable--say a tasty chintz;
you put on that bedstead what I will term a sufficiency of bedding; and
you top up with a sweet little eider-down quilt, as light as roses, and
similar the same in color. You do that, and what follows? You please her
eye when she lies down at night, and you please her eye when she gets up
in the morning--and you're all right so far, and so is she. I will not
dwell, sir, on the toilet-table, nor will I seek to detain you about the
glass to show her figure, and the other glass to show her face, because
I have the articles in stock, and will be myself answerable for their
effect on a lady's mind and person."

He led the way into the next room as he spoke, and arranged its future
fittings, and decorations, as he had already planned out the bedroom,
with the strictest reference to the connection which experience had
shown him to exist between comfortable furniture and female happiness.

Thus far, in my helpless