uddenly, "There is nothing to interest you
on _that_ side," she said. "Look at the drawers here; open them for
yourself." She drew back as she spoke, and pointed to the uppermost of
the row of drawers. A narrow slip of paper was pasted on it, bearing
this inscription:--_"Dead Consolations."_

Amelius opened the drawer; it was full of books. "Look at them,"
she said. Amelius, obeying her, discovered dictionaries, grammars,
exercises, poems, novels, and histories--all in the German language.

"A foreign language tried as a relief," said Mrs. Farnaby, speaking
quietly behind him. "Month after month of hard study--all forgotten now.
The old sorrow came back in spite of it. A dead consolation! Open the
next drawer."

The next drawer revealed water-colours and drawing materials huddled
together in a corner, and a heap of poor little conventional landscapes
filling up the rest of the space. As works of art, they were wretched
in the last degree; monuments of industry and application miserably and
completely thrown away.

"I had no talent for that pursuit, as you see," said Mrs. Farnaby. "But
I persevered with it, week after week, month after month. I thought to
myself, 'I hate it so, it costs me such dreadful trouble, it so worries
and persecutes and humiliates me, that _this_ surely must keep my mind
occupied and my thoughts away from myself!' No; the old sorrow stared me
in the face again on the paper that I was spoiling, through the colours
that I couldn't learn to use. Another dead consolation! Shut it up."

She herself opened a third and a fourth drawer. In one there appeared
a copy of Euclid, and a slate with the problems still traced on it; the
other contained a microscope, and the treatises relating to its use.
"Always the same effort," she said, shutting the door of the press as
she spoke; "and always the same result. You have had enough of it, and
so have I." She turned, and pointed to the lathe in the corner, and to
the clubs and dumb-bells over the mantelpiece. "I can look at _them_
patiently," she went on; "they give me bodily relief. I work at the
lathe till my back aches; I swing the clubs till I'm ready to drop with
fatigue. And then I lie down on the rug there, and sleep it off, and
forget myself for an hour or two. Come back to the fire again. You have
seen my dead consolations; you must hear about my living consolation
next. In justice to Mr. Farnaby--ah, how I hate him!"

She spoke those last vehement