“Why, la, ma’am, ’tis a very small affair,” said Mrs. Turner, with a meaning smile. “A nightcap frill for Muff,” said Miss Carr. “The cold weather is coming. I mean Muff to wear caps in the winter.” “You are a droll lady,” said Mrs. Turner retreating; “it’s a pity you had not something better to make an idol of, than a dog.” While Miss Carr was speaking to Mrs. Turner, Flora glanced round the room, and was not a little surprised to find a pianoforte making part of the furniture, an open drawing-box, of a very expensive kind, with card-board and other drawing materials, occupied a side-table. These were articles of refinement she had not expected from a man-like woman of Miss Carr’s character. “Are you fond of drawing?” she asked, when they were once more alone. “Passionately, my dear: I am a self-taught genius. Other people drew, and I was determined that I would draw too. What should hinder me? I have eyes to see, and hands to copy what pleases me; and the school from which I derive instruction is the best in the world, and furnishes the most perfect models—that of Nature. I never bent my mind to anything that I wished to accomplish, and failed. But you shall judge for yourself.” Miss Wilhelmina sprang from her seat, and bouncing into a closet, soon returned with a large portfolio, which she placed on the table before Flora. “There are my treasures; you can examine them at your leisure.” Flora did not expect anything delicate or beautiful, but she was perfectly astonished, not at the skill and taste displayed in these drawings, but at the extraordinary want of it—nothing could be worse, or indeed so eccentrically bad. The first specimen of Miss Carr’s talents as an artist which she drew from the splendid velvet-covered portfolio puzzled her not a little. What the picture was meant for, Flora, for the life of her, could not tell, until glancing down to the bottom of the sheet, she read with great difficulty the following explanation, written in a vile hand:— “_Portrait of the Incomparable Muff, taken while picking her bone at breakfast._” It was a good thing she had discovered a key to the hieroglyphic, for Miss Carr’s keen eyes were fixed intently upon her, as if they were reading her inmost soul. “Is it not beautiful?” she cried, anticipating Flora’s admiration. “Muff is a very pretty animal,” said Flora evasively. “Muff pretty!” exclaimed Miss Carr indignantly, “who ever thought of insulting Muff by calling her _pretty_! She is exquisite—the perfection of her species. I have, in that spirited picture, hit her off to the life. Look at the action of that tail—the life-like grasp of those paws. You might almost fancy you heard her growl over the delicious broiled mutton-bone.” Flora thought the picture would have suited the _Ornithorhyncus paradoxus_ quite as well as the incomparable Muff. The drawing was too bad to praise; she could not flatter, and she abhorred quizzing.