’The colour-box is probably in the walnut-press; but I advise you not to irritate that yet.  Let me see that drawing, the design for the cottages that Frampton nipped in the bud—­’

‘How pretty and comfortable they do look!’ exclaimed Mary, pleased to come to something that was within her sphere of comprehension.  ’If they were but finished!’

’Ah!  I thought of them when I was lying there in the dell!  Had they been allowed to stand where I wanted them, there would have been no lack of people going home from work; but, ‘Quite impracticable’ came in my way, and I had no heart to finish the drawing.’

‘What a pity!’ exclaimed Mary.

’This was Richardson’s veto, two degrees worse than Frampton’s; and I shall never be able to abuse Frampton again.  I have seen him in his true light now, and never was any one more kind and considerate.  Ha, Mary, what’s that?’

‘It looks like a rainbow in convulsions.’

’Now, Mary, did not I tell you that I could not laugh?  It is a diagram to illustrate the theory of light for Clara.’

‘Does she understand that?’ cried Mary.

’Clara?  She understands anything but going to school—­poor child!  Yes, burn that map of the strata,—­not that—­it is to be a painted window whenever I can afford one, but I never could make money stay with me.  I never could think why—­’

The why was evident enough in the heterogeneous mass—­crumpled prints, blank drawing-paper, and maps heaped ruinously over and under books, stuffed birds, geological specimens, dislocated microscopes, pieces of Roman pavement, curiosities innumerable and indescribable; among which roamed blotting-books, memorandum-books, four pieces of Indian rubber, three pair of compasses, seven paper-knives, ten knives, thirteen odd gloves, fifteen pencils, pens beyond reckoning, a purse, a key, half a poem on the Siege of Granada, three parts of an essay upon Spade Husbandry, the dramatis personae of a tragedy on Queen Brunehault, scores of old letters, and the dust of three years and a half.

Louis owned that the arrangements conduced to finding rather than losing, and rejoiced at the disinterment of his long-lost treasures; but either he grew weary, or the many fragments, the ghosts of departed fancies, made him thoughtful; for he became silent, and only watched and smiled as Mary quietly and noiselessly completed her reforms, and arranged table and chairs for the comfort of his father and aunt.  He thanked her warmly, and hoped that she would pursue her kind task another day,—­a permission which she justly esteemed a great testimony to her having avoided annoying him.  It was a great amusement to him to watch the surprised and pleased looks of his various nurses as each came in, and a real gratification to see his father settle himself with an air of comfort, observing that ’they were under great obligations to Mary.’  Still, the sight of the arrangements