id nothing worth the doing except as an exercise of ingenuity. She
was serving her apprenticeship, however--making her mistakes.

It was late in the autumn before she saw her good friend Sir George
Galbraith again. He came on a bright, clear, frosty morning, and found
her out in the garden, pacing up and down briskly, and looking greatly
exhilarated by the freshness. When she saw him coming towards her, she
uttered a little joyful exclamation, and hurried forward to meet him.

"I have been longing to see you," she said in her unaffected way; "but
I know what the distance is, and how fully your time is occupied. It
is very good of you to come at all."

"Only the time and distance have prevented me coming sooner," he
rejoined. "But, tell me, how have you been getting on? And have you
thought any more of making a career for yourself?"

"I have thought of nothing else," Beth answered brightly; "and I
wonder I ever thought of anything else, for the idea has been in me, I
believe, all my life. I must have discussed it, too, at a very early
age, for I have remembered lately that I was once advised by an old
aunt of mine, the best and dearest friend I ever had, to write only
that which is--or aims at being--soul-sustaining."

He nodded his head approvingly. "From such seed a good crop should
come," he said. "But what line shall you take?"

"I don't know."

"Not novels then, for certain?"

"Nothing for certain--whatever comes and calls for expression."

They were pacing up and down together, and there was a pause.

"Did you expect I should try to write novels, and do you think I
ought?" Beth asked at last.

"I think I did expect it," he answered; "but as to whether you ought
or ought not, that is for you to decide. There is much to be said
against novel reading and writing. I think it was De Quincey who said
that novels are the opium of the West; and I have myself observed that
novel-reading is one of those bad habits that grow upon people until
they are enslaved by it, demoralised by it; and if that is the case
with the reader, what must the writer suffer?"

Beth bent her brows upon this. "But that is only one side of it, is it
not?" she asked after a moment's reflection. "I notice in all things a
curious duality, a right side and a wrong side. Confusion is the wrong
side of order, misery of happiness, falsehood of truth, evil of good;
and it seems to me that novel-reading, which can be a vice, I know,
may also be