The brother and sister then talked over other circumstances connected with their affairs. Charles asked whether any new plan was in view for the girls to earn a little more money. Jane smiled, and said that Isabella had not been idle, but that what she had attempted was yet unfinished, and that if Charles had not visited them, he would have known nothing of the matter till the work was completed. The thing was this: a French lady who had been staying at Mr Everett's in the autumn, had shewn Jane an elegant little French work on plants. A variety of flowers were arranged according to various peculiarities, which had caused them to be adopted as emblems, some of royalty, others of natural or moral qualities, etcetera. There were plates of many of the flowers, some well executed, others very indifferently. It struck Jane at once that Isabella might translate this work, and she borrowed it of the French lady, that they might examine it at home. They thought, on close examination, that the work might be improved in the translation: that various floral emblems might be added, and that drawings, very superior to the plates of the work, might increase its value. When Jane returned the book, she asked its owner whether it had been translated into English. The reply was, that the original work had only been published a few weeks, and could not yet be well known in England. This determined Isabella at once to make the trial. The drawings were the most important and the most difficult part; but by the interest and assistance of a few friends, Isabella obtained access to some excellent botanical works and plates. Many, indeed most of the flowers, she was able to draw from nature during the eight months that the work was in progress; and where the flowers were so rare as to be out of her reach altogether, there was nothing to be done but to copy from the plates of the original work. With the translation she took great pains, and here Jane helped her. Jane had an excellent and well-cultivated taste, and she was therefore well fitted to judge of style, and she assisted Isabella to re-write and polish her translation, till no foreign idiom could be detected, and till there was no trace of the stiffness or poverty which characterises most versions from the French. When this was done, Jane, who wrote a much better hand than Isabella, transcribed it, by degrees, as the drawings were finished, one by one, so that the work was complete as far as it went. At this time, only four drawings and about twelve pages of copying remained to be done, and then it was to try its fate in the hands of a London bookseller.