ery faded chair raised upon a very dusty throne
in Miss La Creevy's room, giving that lady a sitting for the portrait
upon which she was engaged; and towards the full perfection of which,
Miss La Creevy had had the street-door case brought upstairs, in
order that she might be the better able to infuse into the counterfeit
countenance of Miss Nickleby, a bright salmon flesh-tint which she had
originally hit upon while executing the miniature of a young officer
therein contained, and which bright salmon flesh-tint was considered,
by Miss La Creevy's chief friends and patrons, to be quite a novelty in
art: as indeed it was.

'I think I have caught it now,' said Miss La Creevy. 'The very shade!
This will be the sweetest portrait I have ever done, certainly.'

'It will be your genius that makes it so, then, I am sure,' replied
Kate, smiling.

'No, no, I won't allow that, my dear,' rejoined Miss La Creevy. 'It's
a very nice subject--a very nice subject, indeed--though, of course,
something depends upon the mode of treatment.'

'And not a little,' observed Kate.

'Why, my dear, you are right there,' said Miss La Creevy, 'in the main
you are right there; though I don't allow that it is of such very great
importance in the present case. Ah! The difficulties of Art, my dear,
are great.'

'They must be, I have no doubt,' said Kate, humouring her good-natured
little friend.

'They are beyond anything you can form the faintest conception of,'
replied Miss La Creevy. 'What with bringing out eyes with all one's
power, and keeping down noses with all one's force, and adding to heads,
and taking away teeth altogether, you have no idea of the trouble one
little miniature is.'

'The remuneration can scarcely repay you,' said Kate.

'Why, it does not, and that's the truth,' answered Miss La Creevy; 'and
then people are so dissatisfied and unreasonable, that, nine times out
of ten, there's no pleasure in painting them. Sometimes they say, "Oh,
how very serious you have made me look, Miss La Creevy!" and at others,
"La, Miss La Creevy, how very smirking!" when the very essence of a
good portrait is, that it must be either serious or smirking, or it's no
portrait at all.'

'Indeed!' said Kate, laughing.

'Certainly, my dear; because the sitters are always either the one or
the other,' replied Miss La Creevy. 'Look at the Royal Academy! All
those beautiful shiny portraits of gentlemen in black velvet waistcoats,
with their fists