"If their purpose is to afford a livelihood to those that make them, I suppose they do, Mr. Hartington; but they do not fulfil what ought to be their purpose--which should, of course, be to elevate the mind or to improve the taste." He shook his head. "That is too lofty an ideal altogether for me," he said. "I doubt whether men are much happier for their minds being improved or their tastes elevated, unless they are fortunate enough to have sufficient means to gratify those tastes. If a man is happy and contented with the street he lives in, the house he inhabits, the pictures on his walls, and the books he gets from a library, is he better off when you teach him that the street is mean and ugly, the house an outrage on architectural taste, the wall-papers revolting, the pictures daubs, and the books trash? Upon my word I don't think so. I am afraid I am a Philistine." "But you are an artist, are you not, Mr. Hartington," Miss Treadwyn said, looking at the sketch which had already made considerable progress. "Unfortunately, no; I have a taste for art, but that is all. I should be better off if I had not, for then I should be contented with doing things like this; as it is I am in a perpetual state of grumble because I can do no better." "You know the Latin proverb _meliora video_, and so on, Mr. Hartington, does it apply?" "That is the first time I have had Latin quoted against me by a young lady," Cuthbert said, smilingly, but with a slight flush that showed the shaft had gone home. "I will not deny that the quotation exactly hits my case. I can only plead that nature, which gave me the love for art, did not give me the amount of energy and the capacity for hard work that are requisite to its successful cultivation, and has not even given me the stimulus of necessity, which is, I fancy, the greatest human motor." "I should be quite content to paint as well as you do, Mr. Hartington," Anna Treadwyn said. "It must add immensely to the pleasure of travelling to be able to carry home such remembrances of places one has seen." "Yes, it does so, Miss Treadwyn. I have done a good deal of wandering about in a small way, and have quite a pile of portfolios by whose aid I can travel over the ground again and recall not only the scenery but almost every incident, however slight, that occurred in connection therewith." "Well, Anna, I think we had better be continuing our walk." "I suppose we had. May I ask, Mr. Hartington, where you are staying? I am sure my mother will be very pleased if you will call upon us at Porthalloc. There is a glorious view from the garden. I suppose you will be at work all day, but you are sure to find us in of an evening."