ppier, even if you did nothing but wander. Remember, however,
that I shall have an object in view; but if you only went on and on,
like some enchanted lady in a fairy tale, you might be happier than now.
In a day's wandering you would pass many a hill, wood, and watercourse,
each perpetually altering in aspect as the sun shone out or was
overcast; as the weather was wet or fair, dark or bright. Nothing
changes in Briarfield rectory. The plaster of the parlour ceilings, the
paper on the walls, the curtains, carpets, chairs, are still the same."

"Is change necessary to happiness?"

"Yes."

"Is it synonymous with it?"

"I don't know; but I feel monotony and death to be almost the same."

Here Jessie spoke.

"Isn't she mad?" she asked.

"But, Rose," pursued Caroline, "I fear a wanderer's life, for me at
least, would end like that tale you are reading--in disappointment,
vanity, and vexation of spirit."

"Does 'The Italian' so end?"

"I thought so when I read it."

"Better to try all things and find all empty than to try nothing and
leave your life a blank. To do this is to commit the sin of him who
buried his talent in a napkin--despicable sluggard!"

"Rose," observed Mrs. Yorke, "solid satisfaction is only to be realized
by doing one's duty."

"Right, mother! And if my Master has given me ten talents, my duty is to
trade with them, and make them ten talents more. Not in the dust of
household drawers shall the coin be interred. I will _not_ deposit it in
a broken-spouted teapot, and shut it up in a china closet among
tea-things. I will _not_ commit it to your work-table to be smothered in
piles of woollen hose. I will _not_ prison it in the linen press to find
shrouds among the sheets. And least of all, mother" (she got up from the
floor)--"least of all will I hide it in a tureen of cold potatoes, to be
ranged with bread, butter, pastry, and ham on the shelves of the
larder."

She stopped, then went on, "Mother, the Lord who gave each of us our
talents will come home some day, and will demand from all an account.
The teapot, the old stocking-foot, the linen rag, the willow-pattern
tureen will yield up their barren deposit in many a house. Suffer your
daughters, at least, to put their money to the exchangers, that they may
be enabled at the Master's coming to pay Him His own with usury."

"Rose, did you bring your sampler with you, as I told you?"

"Yes, mother."

"Sit down, and do a line of marking."