e, exhausting life. He managed
to persuade Miss Barry and Sylvie and Mrs. Lawrence to go, and insisted
upon Irene having the variety of air and scene. There was a roomy
furnished cottage at their disposal: they could cook their meals, or
have them sent in. Fred should come down once or twice a week, and he
and Darcy would enliven them with flying visits. Miss Barry must take
her pony and carriage.

Jack approved of the plan at once. It would bring the two beings in whom
he was so warmly interested more closely in contact with each other,
give them those bits and fragments of leisurely indolence so conducive
to sentiment. Sylvie would judge more truly and tenderly than it was
possible to do at present; and he could not see her alone, could not be
her companion in walks and drives, without betraying his regard.

While the plan was still under consideration, Dame Fortune resolved to
smile upon Fred Lawrence. Late in the winter he had sent a paper on
household art, with several exquisite designs, to a magazine, and for
once happened to hit the prevailing fancy. He was asked for a series of
such articles, with the offer of having them collected in book form
afterward. It more than encouraged him: it gave him a feeling of
certainty that he had struck the right vein, that here was a fair and
appreciative field for his talent, his fine taste, and high culture. A
little utilitarian, perhaps; and he smiled, thinking of some past
dreams. And was true art so ethereal that it must exist only in the
exalted states of the mind? Was it not to embellish and beautify all
lives, rather than crowd out the thousands that the few might feast on
some exquisite vision? Was any art higher than that which boldly thrust
aside shams, and went to the shaping of true, strong, faithful aims in
the work placed before one? Were those wonderful Greek fragments,
wrought in times of social depravity such as the world now shrank from
mentioning, to be one's guide and inspirer, to the despising of purer if
less sensuous forms of beauty? If one enlightened and sweetened the life
of to-day with the work of to-day, would it not be as worthy as hugging
to the soul some useless theory?

He mentioned his new offer to Mr. Garafield. It would not be honest to
take the time that was another's; and surely Fred Lawrence's mental
capacity had largely cleared when he came to put into every-day work the
fine sense of honor that he had hitherto supposed belonged only to