ctise the spot stroke.

In the drawing-room Miss Edith hoped that her playing a little would
not interfere with their artistic pursuits; and Madge went and got her
sketch-book and water-colours, and carried them to a small table at one
of the windows, and sat down. Captain King remained standing.

The sketches, to tell the truth, were as bad as bad could be. They
were all experimental things, done out of her own head, aiming at a
land of the beautiful, unknown to anybody on earth but the
chromo-lithographer. The actual sea was out there, staring her in the
face, and there were boats on the beach and boats on the water; but
instead of trying her hand at anything before her, she must needs
imagine lovely pictures, mostly of blue and pink, with goats perched on
brown crags, and an ill-drawn eagle soaring over an Alpine peak. There
were, however, one or two sketches of mist or moonlight or thunderstorm
that had certainly a weird and eerie effect; but it was not necessary
to tell the spectator that these had been got in moments of impatience
when, after laborious trials at brilliant-hued scenes, the angry artist
had taken up a big brush and washed the whole thing into
chaos--thereby, to her astonishment, reaching something, she did not
know exactly what, that was at all events mysterious and harmonious in
tone.

But it was the shipping about which she had sought his advice. The
little white dots on blue lakes that were supposed to be feluccas or
barchettas he passed; but when it came to a big sailing-boat lying on a
beach, and that beach presumably Cornish, from the colour of the rocks,
he made a civil and even timid remonstrance.

'I don't think I would have the mast quite in the middle of the boat,
if I were you,' said he, gently.

'I thought it always was,' she said--and yet if she had gone to the
window she might have seen.

'If it is a lugger, you see,' he continued, giving her all sorts of
chances of escape, 'the mast would be at the bow. And if it is a
cutter, you would still have to put the mast farther forward, and give
her a boom and a bowsprit. Or if it is a yawl, then you would have a
little jigger-mast astern--about there----'

'Oh, I can't be expected to know things like that,' she said.
'Scientific accuracy isn't wanted. They're only sketches.'

'Yes; oh yes,' he said.

'Won't that boat do?' she demanded.

'Oh yes, it will do,' he said, fearful of offending her. 'It isn't
exactly where th