ply stored with a profusion of whatever was
necessary to the enjoyment of their leisure hours.

But all was lost on Josephine. While Adelaide and Rosalind were
assiduous in showing and explaining to her every thing, she heard them
with listlessness and apathy, and made not the slightest remark. At
last, she said "We will reserve some of these sights for to-morrow. I
must go and dress myself for dinner. Oh! how I hate to dress. It is an
odious task. I must have Mary to assist me again; for I never _can_ get
through the fatigue of dressing myself, and fixing my hair."

In the afternoon, Adelaide and Rosalind took their sewing, and seated
themselves with Mrs. Mortlake in the porch. As Josephine appeared to
have no work, Mrs. Mortlake gave her a volume of Miss Edgeworth's Moral
Tales, and requested her to read one of them aloud. Josephine took the
book and began to read "The Prussian Vase," but with so monotonous and
inarticulate a tone, or rather drawl, that it was painful to hear her:
and her cousins were not sorry when, at the end of three or four pages,
she stopped, and complained that she was too much fatigued to read any
more.

Mrs. Mortlake then desired Adelaide, who read extremely well, to take
the book and continue the story, but in a short time Josephine was
discovered to be asleep. When Adelaide ceased reading, Josephine awoke,
and saying that she could not live without her afternoon nap, went up
stairs to lie down on her bed.

She slept till near tea-time, and when tea was over, her cousins and
Mrs. Mortlake prepared for a walk, and invited Josephine to join them.
This she did; but in less than ten minutes she complained so much of
fatigue, that Rosalind turned back and accompanied her home, and she
reclined on the settee in the porch till the lamps were lighted in the
front-parlour. The girls then showed Josephine a portable diorama,
containing twelve beautiful coloured views of castles, abbeys, temples,
and mountain scenery. Each of these exquisite little landscapes was
fixed, in turn, as the back scene of a sort of miniature stage. The
skies and lights of these views were all transparent, and there were
other skies which turned on rollers, and represented sunrise, moonlight,
sunshine, and thunder-clouds. These second skies being placed behind
those of the picture, were slowly unrolled by turning a small handle,
and produced the most varied and beautiful effects on the scenery, which
could thus at pleasure