At breakfast in the drawing-room, during which Cousin Egbert earned warm praise from Mrs. Effie for his lack of appetite (he winking violently at me during this), I learned that I should be expected to accompany him to a certain art gallery which corresponds to our British Museum. I was a bit surprised, indeed, to learn that he largely spent his days there, and was accustomed to make notes of the various objects of interest. “I insisted,” explained Mrs. Effie, “that he should absorb all the culture he could on his trip abroad, so I got him a notebook in which he puts down his impressions, and I must say he’s done fine. Some of his remarks are so good that when he gets home I may have him read a paper before our Onwards and Upwards Club.” Cousin Egbert wriggled modestly at this and said: “Shucks!” which I took to be a term of deprecation. “You needn’t pretend,” said Mrs. Effie. “Just let Ruggles here look over some of the notes you have made,” and she handed me a notebook of ruled paper in which there was a deal of writing. I glanced, as bidden, at one or two of the paragraphs, and confess that I, too, was amazed at the fluency and insight displayed along lines in which I should have thought the man entirely uninformed. “This choice work represents the first or formative period of the Master,” began one note, “but distinctly foreshadows that later method which made him at once the hope and despair of his contemporaries. In the ‘Portrait of the Artist by Himself’ we have a canvas that well repays patient study, since here is displayed in its full flower that ruthless realism, happily attenuated by a superbly subtle delicacy of brush work----” It was really quite amazing, and I perceived for the first time that Cousin Egbert must be “a diamond in the rough,” as the well-known saying has it. I felt, indeed, that I would be very pleased to accompany him on one of his instructive strolls through this gallery, for I have always been of a studious habit and anxious to improve myself in the fine arts. “You see?” asked Mrs. Effie, when I had perused this fragment. “And yet folks back home would tell you that he’s just a----” Cousin Egbert here coughed alarmingly. “No matter,” she continued. “He’ll show them that he’s got something in him, mark my words.” “Quite so, Madam,” I said, “and I shall consider it a privilege to be present when he further prosecutes his art studies.” “You may keep him out till dinner-time,” she continued. “I’m shopping this morning, and in the afternoon I shall motor to have tea in the Boy with the Senator and Mr. Nevil Vane-Basingwell.”