He had come with us. Not that he often went out sketching, but our descriptions of the beauty of the scenery had roused him to make another attempt for the "Household Album." Seldom lastingly provided, for his own part, with apparatus of any kind, Jack had a genius for purveying all that he required in an emergency. On this occasion he had borrowed Mrs. Arkwright's paint-box (without leave), and was by no means ill supplied with pencils and brushes which certainly were not his own. He had hastily stripped a couple of sheets from my block whilst I was dressing, and with these materials he seated himself on that side of me which enabled him to dip into my water-pot, and began to paint. Not half-way through my outline, I was just beginning to realize the complexities of a bird's-eye view with your middle distance in a valley, and your foreground sloping steeply upwards to your feet, when Jack, washing out a large, dyed sable sky-brush in my pot, with an amount of splashing that savoured of triumph, said: "_That's_ done!" I paused in a vigorous mental effort to put aside my _knowledge_ of the relative sizes of objects, and to _see_ that a top stone of my foreground wall covered three fields, the river, and half the river's bank beyond. "_Done?_" I exclaimed. Jack put his brush into his mouth, in defiance of all rules, and deliberately sucked it dry. Then he waved his sketch before my eyes. "The effect's rather good," I confessed, "but oh, Jack, it's out of all proportion! That gate really looks as big as the whole valley and the hills beyond. The top of the gate-post ought to be up in the sky." "It would look beastly ugly if it was," replied he complacently. "You've got a very good tint for those hills; but the foreground is mere scrambling. Oh, Jack, do finish it a little more! You would draw so nicely if you had any patience." "How imperfectly you understand my character," said Jack, packing up his traps. "I would sit on a monument and smile at grief with any one, this very day, if the monument were in a grove, or even if I had an umbrella to smile under. To sit unsheltered under this roasting sun, and make myself giddy by gauging proportions with a pencil at the end of my nose, or smudging my mistakes with melting india-rubber, is quite another matter. I'm off to Eleanor. I've got another sheet of paper, and I think trees are rather in my line." "I _thought_ my block looked smaller," said I, rapidly comparing Jack's paper and my own, with a feeling for size developed by my labours. "Has she got a water-pot?" asked Jack. "She is sure to have," said I pointedly. "She always takes her own materials with her." "How fortunate for those who do not!" said Jack. "Now, Margery dear, don't look sulky. I knew you wouldn't grudge me a bit of paper to get into the 'Household Album' with. Come down into the ravine. You're as white as a blank sheet of Whatman's hot-pressed water-colour paper!"