At this moment Cicely burst in again breathless, her hair streaming behind her, her dress catching in the door, which she slammed after her. "Look here!" she cried; "look here, before you say Mab has no talent!" and she tossed down on the table the square blue-lined book, which her sister by this time had almost filled. She stood before them glowing and defiant, with flashing eyes and flowing hair; then she recollected some guilty recent pages, and quailed, putting out her hand for the book again. "Please it is only the beginning, not the end, you are to look at," she said, peremptory yet appealing. Had Miss Blandy alone been in the seat of judgment, she would, I fear, have paid but little attention to this appeal; but the old drawing-master was gentle and kind, as old professors of the arts so often are (for Art is Humanity, I think, almost oftener than letters), and besides, the young petitioner was very pretty in her generous enthusiasm, which affected him both as a man and an artist. The first page at once gave him a guess as to the inexpediency of examining the last; and the old man perceived in a moment at once the mistake he had made, and the cause of it. He turned over the first few pages, chuckling amused approbation. "So these are your sister's," he said, and laughed and nodded his kind old head. When he came to a sketch of Hannah, the maid-of-all-work at the rectory, the humour of which might seem more permissible in Miss Blandy's eyes than the caricatures of ladies and gentlemen, he showed it to her; and even Miss Blandy, though meditating downright slaughter upon Cicely, could not restrain a smile. "Is this really Mabel's?" she condescended to ask. "As you say, Mr. Lake, not at all bad; much better than I could have thought." "Better? it is capital!" said the drawing-master; and then he shut up the book close, and put it back in Cicely's hands. "I see there are private scribblings in it," he said, with a significant look; "take it back, my dear. I will speak to Miss Mabel to-morrow. And now, Miss Blandy, we will finish our business, if you please," he said benevolently, to leave time for Cicely and her dangerous volume to escape. Miss Blandy was vanquished by this stratagem, and Cicely, beginning to tremble at the thought of the danger she had escaped, withdrew very demurely, having first piled up on the table the books she had thrown down in her impetuosity. I may add at once that she did not escape without an address, in which withering irony alternated with solemn appeal to her best feelings, and which drew many hot tears from poor Cicely's eyes, but otherwise so far as I am aware did her no harm.