When Isabella had done a few drawings, and became more accustomed to the employment, she found that she need not be so absorbed in it, as to be unable to attend to her sisters while they read aloud. This added great pleasantness to their morning employment, and both Jane's work, and Isabella's drawing, got on fast while they listened to Harriet and Alfred, who took it in turn to read. But when the pasting together of their work began, there was an end of reading. It was too anxious a business to admit of any division of attention. The gilt edges must be exactly even, the sides must go exactly together, the bottoms must be exactly flat; or they would be deformed and unsteady. Jane was the only one careful enough to undertake this most difficult part of the business, and she bestowed great pains upon it. In general, she completely succeeded; but it was a work of time, and the fortnight of her holidays was over before their task was more than two-thirds done. Eight articles out of the dozen were finished, and she longed to see them completed. It was with a sigh that she left the busy and happy party at home, on the morning when she resumed her charge at Mrs Everett's, and she could not help fancying that Mrs Everett was less kind than usual, that the children were far from improved by their release from her authority, that they had never been so troublesome, and her task never so irksome. This was in part true; the children were nearly as unwilling to be managed, as Jane was to manage them, and they were fully as sorry as she, that the days of lessons and work, of authority and obedience, were come again, after the romping hours of their Christmas revellings.