"I shall be in the 'Household Album' this evening," said Jack, in deliberate tones. "My next ambition is the Society of Painters in Water Colours. The subject of my first painting is settled. Three grass fields (haymaking over the day before yesterday). A wall in front of the first field, a hedge in front of the second, a wall in front of the third. A gate in the middle of the wall. A spotted pig in the middle of the field. The sun at its meridian; the pig asleep. Motto, 'Whatever is, is beautiful.'" Eleanor and I (in the interests of peace) hastened to change the subject by ridiculing Jack's complacent conviction that his sketch would be accepted for the "Household Album." And yet it was. The fresh-water _alga_ Jack had been lucky enough to find was a new species, and threw Mrs. Arkwright and Eleanor into a state of the highest excitement. But all their entreaties failed to persuade Jack to disclose the secret of the habitat. "Put my sketch into the 'Household Album,' and I'll tell you all about it," said he. Mrs. Arkwright held out against this for half-an-hour. Then she gave way. Jack's sketch was gummed in (it took up a whole page, being the full size of my block), and he told us all about the water-weed. It was described and figured in the _Phycological Quarterly_, and received the specific name of _Arkwrightii_, and Jack's double triumph was complete. We were very glad for his success, but it almost increased the sense of disappointment that our share of the expedition had been so unlucky. "It seems such a waste," said I, "to have got to such a lovely place with one's drawing things and plenty of time, and to come away without a sketch worth keeping at the end, just because one doesn't know the right way of working." "I think there's a good deal in what Jack said about your sketch," said Eleanor; "and I think if one looked at the way real artists have treated similar subjects, and then went at it again and tried to do it on a similar principle----" "If ever we do go there again," Clement interrupted, "but I don't suppose we shall--these holidays. And the way summer after summer slips away is awful. I'm more and more convinced that it's a great mistake to have so many hobbies. No life is long enough for more than one pursuit, and it's ten to one you die in the middle of mastering that. One is sure to die in the early stages of half-a-dozen." Clement is very apt to develop some odd theory of this kind, and to preach it with a severity that borders on gloom. I never know what to say, even if I disagree with him; but Eleanor takes up the cudgels at once.