nus,
was it?--that he had found in his father's stock. He could see himself
lying on the floor--poring over the old plates, morning, noon, and
night--then using a little lad, his father's apprentice, to examine
him in what he had learnt--the two going about arm-in-arm--Backhouse
asking the questions according to a paper drawn up by John--'How many
heads to the deltoid?'--and so on--over and over again--and with what
an eagerness, what an ardour!--till the brain was bursting and the
hand quivering with new knowledge--and the power to use it. Then
Leonardo's 'Art of Painting' and Reynolds's Discourses'--both
discovered in the shop, and studied incessantly, till the boy of
eighteen felt himself the peer of any Academician, and walked proudly
down the Kendal streets, thinking of the half-finished paintings in
his garret at home, and of the dreams, the conceptions, the ambitions
of which that garret had already been the scene.

After that--some evil days! Quarrels with his father, refusals to
be bound to the trade, to accept the shop as his whole future and
inheritance--painful scenes with the old man, and with the customers
who complained of the son's rudeness and inattention--attempts of
relations to mediate between the two, and all the time his own burning
belief in himself and passion to be free. And at last a time of
truce, of conditions made and accepted--the opening of the new Art
School--evenings of delightful study there--and, suddenly, out of the
mists, Phoebe's brown eyes, and Phoebe's soft encouragement!

Yes, it was Phoebe, Phoebe herself who had determined his career; let
her consider that, when he asked for sacrifices! But for the balm
she had poured upon his sore ambitions--but for those long walks and
talks, in which she had been to him first the mere recipient of his
dreams and egotisms, and then--since she had the loveliest eyes, and
a young wild charm--a creature to be hotly wooed and desired, he might
never have found courage enough to seize upon his fate.

For her sake indeed he had dared it all. She had consoled and inspired
him; but she had made the breach with his father final. When they met
she was only a struggling teacher in Miss Mason's school, the daughter
of a small farmer in the Vale of Keswick. Old Fenwick looked much
higher for his son. So there was renewed battle at home, till at last
a couple of portrait commissions from a big house near Kendal clinched
the matter. A hurried marriage ha