ngs
that I keep by me. Any finer sort of work I mostly do by order."

"You see, sir," said Mrs. Somers, "it takes so much more time for pretty
work-baskets, and such like; and unless done to order, it might be
a chance if he could get it sold. But pray be seated, sir," and Mrs.
Somers placed a chair for her visitor, "while I just run up stairs for
the work-basket which my son has made for Miss Travers. It is to go home
to-morrow, and I put it away for fear of accidents."

Kenelm seated himself, and, drawing his chair near to Will's, took up
the half-finished basket which the young man had laid down on the table.

"This seems to me very nice and delicate workmanship," said Kenelm; "and
the shape, when you have finished it, will be elegant enough to please
the taste of a lady."

"It is for Mrs. Lethbridge," said Will: "she wanted something to hold
cards and letters; and I took the shape from a book of drawings which
Mr. Lethbridge kindly lent me. You know Mr. Lethbridge, sir? He is a
very good gentleman."

"No, I don't know him. Who is he?"

"Our clergyman, sir. This is the book."

To Kenelm's surprise, it was a work on Pompeii, and contained woodcuts
of the implements and ornaments, mosaics and frescos, found in that
memorable little city.

"I see this is your model," said Kenelm; "what they call a _patera_,
and rather a famous one. You are copying it much more truthfully than I
should have supposed it possible to do in substituting basket-work for
bronze. But you observe that much of the beauty of this shallow bowl
depends on the two doves perched on the brim. You can't manage that
ornamental addition."

"Mrs. Lethbridge thought of putting there two little stuffed
canary-birds."

"Did she? Good heavens!" exclaimed Kenelm.

"But somehow," continued Will, "I did not like that, and I made bold to
say so."

"Why did not you do it?"

"Well, I don't know; but I did not think it would be the right thing."

"It would have been very bad taste, and spoiled the effect of your
basket-work; and I'll endeavour to explain why. You see here, in the
next page, a drawing of a very beautiful statue. Of course this statue
is intended to be a representation of nature, but nature idealized. You
don't know the meaning of that hard word, idealized, and very few people
do. But it means the performance of a something in art according to the
idea which a man's mind forms to itself out of a something in nature.
That something in