"You are fond of botany, I suppose, Miss Lovel?" Mr. Granger asked presently, with a palpable effort. He was not an adept in small talk, and though in the course of years of dinner-eating and dinner-giving he had been frequently called upon to address his conversation to young ladies, he never opened his lips to one of the class without a sense of constraint and an obvious difficulty. He had all his life been most at home in men's society, where the talk was of grave things, and was no bad talker when the question in hand was either commercial or political. But as a rich man cannot go through life without being cultivated more or less by the frivolous herd, Mr. Granger had been compelled to conform himself somehow to the requirements of civilised society, and to talk in his stiff bald way of things which he neither understood nor cared for. "I am fond of flowers," Clarissa answered, "but I really know nothing of botany. I would always rather paint them than anatomise them." "Indeed! Painting is a delightful occupation for a young lady. My daughter sketches a little, but I cannot say that she has any remarkable talent that way. She has been well taught, of course." "You will find Miss Lovel quite a first-rate artist," said Lady Laura, pleased to praise her favourite. "I really know no one of her age with such a marked genius for art. Everybody observes it." And then, half afraid that this praise might seem to depreciate Miss Granger, the good-natured _chatelaine_ went on, "Your daughter illuminates, I daresay?" "Well, yes, I suppose so, Lady Laura. I know that Sophia does some messy kind of work involving the use of gums and colours. I have seen her engaged in it sometimes. And there are scriptural texts on the walls of our poor-schools which I conclude are her work. A young woman cannot have too many pursuits. I like to see my daughter occupied." "Miss Granger reads a good deal, I suppose, like Clarissa,' Lady Laura hazarded. "No, I cannot say that she does. My daughter's habits are active and energetic rather than studious. Nor should I encourage her in giving much time to literature, unless the works she read were of a very solid character. I have never found anything great achieved by reading men of my own acquaintance; and directly I hear that a man is never so happy as in his library, I put him down as a man whose life will be a failure." "But the great men of our day have generally been men of wide reading, have they not?" "I think not, Lady Laura. They have been men who have made a little learning go a long way. Of course there are numerous exceptions amongst the highest class of all--statesmen, and so on. But for success in active life, I take it, a man cannot have his brain too clear of waste rubbish in the way of book-learning. He wants all his intellectual coin in his current account, you see, ready for immediate use, not invested in out-of-the-way corners, where he can't get at it."