ures within
himself; he only needed the slightest touchstone from the outside
world to draw them out. A fieldmouse's nest was nearly as good to him
as an eagle's eyrie, an ox-eyed daisy as a white rose, a red
hemp-nettle as a foxglove. He put down his hat and stood contemplating
the bit of rock, until every morsel of leaf told him its tale, and
then proceeded to fill his pockets and hands with what the poorest
country boy would have deemed the veriest weeds; and at last he would
have faced round, and marched home, unconscious that his fair hair,
bleached like a child's, was undefended from a pitiless shower
impending over his head. Dulcie lingered dutifully behind, picked up
that three-cornered hat timidly, called his attention to his
negligence, and while he stooped with the greatest ease in life, she,
bashfully turning her eyes another way, finally clapped the covering
on his crown, as a mother bonnets her child.

IV.--OTHER CASTS FOLLOWING THE CAST IN THE WAGGON.

Clary and Dulcie were slightly censured for their officiousness in the
affairs of these painter fellows: but it is in the nature of women not
to take well with contradiction: it is in the nature of good women to
fly furiously in the face of whatever crosses their generosity, or
thwarts their magnanimity.

The crisis came about in this way: Will Locke had finished his work long
before Sam; not that Will was more industrious, but he had not got half
the commissions at only half the price, and that was about the usual
division of labour between them. The two men were born to it. Sam's art
took the lucrative shape of portrait-painting; Will's the side of flower
and fruit and landscape painting, which was vilely unremunerative then,
and allegorical painting, which no one will be at the pains to
understand, or, what is more to the purpose, to buy, in this enlightened
nineteenth century. Sam, who was thriving already, fell in love with
Clarissa Gage, with her six thousand pounds fortune: there was no
premeditation, or expediency, or cunning, in the matter; it was the luck
of the man. But Will Locke could never have done it: he, who could never
make a clear subsistence for himself, must attach himself to a
penniless, cheery, quick little girl like Dulcie; and where he could not
well maintain one, must provide for two at the lowest estimate. Will
Locke was going, and there was no talk of his return; Dulcie was
helping him to put up his sketches with her orderly