Working round this dreary circle of thought, she sat motionless, pencil in hand, too absorbed to notice the entrance of a woman of a certain age, who by her costume evidently aimed at the higher appellation of a lady. She wore a handsome plum-colored silk, a tint which appears to be the especial favorite of publicans' wives and aspiring landladies. Her head--a high, narrow, self-asserting sort of head--was perched on a long, thin neck, and adorned with a scanty screw of hair on the top, secured by a high tortoise-shell comb, while the front tresses were disposed in short, wiry ringlets, painfully suggestive of steel springs, and carefully regulated by ancient contrivances called side-combs. These locks vibrated when she moved; and as her walk was a succession of jerky sinkings and risings, the ringlets had an active time of it. Her features were regular and good, but somewhat neutralized by a faint expression of constantly turning up her nose, which was anything but _retroussé_, as if in contemptuous indignation at the futile efforts of the world in general to take her in. This personage paused as she was half across the little room, and looked very sharply at its occupant's profile, which was turned to her. "Anyways, you ain't breaking your heart with hard work," she exclaimed, in a tone which would have been painfully acute but for a slight indistinctness caused by a melancholy gap where pearly front teeth ought to have been. Ella started at her voice, and a large tear, which some time, unknown to her, had hung upon her eyelashes, fell upon the edge of her paper. She looked at it dismayed; half an inch nearer, and it would have played havoc with her colors. She hastily placed her handkerchief on the fatal spot, and, turning toward the speaker, said, absently: "Working! Yes, Mrs. Kershaw; I am succeeding tolerably with this design; I am quite interested in it." "And that is the reason you are crying over it--eh?" "Crying! Oh, no"--smiling a little sadly--"I am not crying." "Something very like it, then," said Mrs. Kershaw, advancing to the table and looking critically at Ella's work. "It's a queer thing," she remarked, with high-toned candor. "What is it for?" "Oh, the cover of a book, or--the back of a portfolio." "Well, I suppose it's my ignorance; but I can't see the beauty of it. Why, there's dozens and dozens of things just like that ready printed in all the shops; and you don't suppose hand-work can hold its own with machine-work? Why don't you paint a house, and a tree, and a cow--something sensible-like--that would set off a nice, handsome frame? I wouldn't mind buying such a picture myself; my first floor is a trifle naked for want of pictures." "O Mrs. Kershaw!" exclaimed Ella, smiling, this time more brightly, for she was amused at her friend's notions of art; "I assure you an original design is not to be despised. If I can but find favor with--"