"Oh, no! indeed you will not be too late, mamma--only look at my basket," said Favoretta, gently pulling her mother by the hand into the parlour.--Isabella pointed to her silk globe, which was suspended in the window, and, taking up her camel-hair pencil, cried, "Only look, ma'am, how nicely I have traced the Rhine, the Po, the Elbe, and the Danube; you see I have not finished Europe; it will be quite another looking thing, when Asia, Africa, and America are done, and when the colours are quite dry." "Now, Isabella, pray let her look at my basket," cried the eager Favoretta, holding up the scarcely begun basket--"I will do a row, to show you how it is done;" and the little girl, with busy fingers, began to weave. The ingenious and delicate appearance of the work, and the happy countenance of the little workwoman, fixed the mother's pleased attention, and she, for a moment, forgot that her carriage was waiting. "The carriage is at the door, ma'am," said the footman. "I must be gone!" cried Mrs. Harcourt, starting from her reverie. "What am I doing here? I ought to have been away this half-hour--Matilda!--why is not she amongst you?" Matilda, apart from the busy company, was reading with so much earnestness, that her mother called twice before she looked up. "How happy you all look," continued Mrs. Harcourt; "and I am going to one of those terrible _great_ dinners--I shan't eat one morsel; then cards all night, which I hate as much as you do, Isabella--pity me, Mad. de Rosier!--Good bye, happy creatures!"--and with some real and some affected reluctance, Mrs. Harcourt departed. It is easy to make children happy, for one evening, with new toys and new employments; but the difficulty is to continue the pleasure of occupation after it has lost its novelty: the power of habit may well supply the place of the charm of novelty. Mad. de Rosier exerted herself, for some weeks, to invent occupations for her pupils, that she might induce in their minds a love for industry; and when they had tasted the pleasure, and formed the habit of doing _something_, she now and then suffered them to experience the misery of having nothing to do. The state of _ennui_, when contrasted with that of pleasurable mental or bodily activity, becomes odious and insupportable to children.