"There is not a season in the year that is not full of sweetness, and that we do not enjoy. If it were always spring the charm of spring would be gone. If it were always summer we should lie down and sleep the days away, and should gradually grow indifferent to the beautiful shapes and colors with which nature adorns the world in the holiday time of the year. Is not autumn charming, with its moons and sunsets and changing colors? And what can be prettier and more suggestive of fairy fancies than winter, in its garb of snow and icicle? There are plenty of bad days in all the seasons, even in the brightest, and it is those which make us enjoy the good all the more. In the last weeks of my dear father's life I learned a great deal from him; it was almost, Kingsley, as if he created a new life within me; and he had the power, in a few words, of unfolding wonders and making you understand them." "Your dear father," said Kingsley, "was a wise and good man--a poet, too, and could have been almost anything in the artistic world he cared to aspire to. I have no doubt of that, Nansie, dear. And yet he was always poor, and died so." "It is true, Kingsley. I think it was because he lacked--" But Nansie paused in sudden alarm, and the word she was about to utter hung upon her tongue. It distressed her, also, that, in what was in her mind as to the reason of her father's worldly failure, the very words which Kingsley used towards himself should have suggested themselves to her. "Because he lacked"--prompted Kingsley. "Finish the sentence, Nansie." "The desire to produce, to achieve," said Nansie, in a stumbling fashion. "No, Nansie, that was not the way you intended to finish the sentence. I want it in the original, without correction or afterthought. Because he lacked--" "Application," said Nansie, desperately. "Exactly. My own failing." Kingsley spoke gently, and as though he was not in the least dismayed by the example of an aimless life which presented itself in the career of Nansie's father. "Your father had great powers, Nansie, and could have accomplished great things if he had been industrious. But he was a happy as well as a good man. I cannot recall, in any person I ever knew, one who was so thoroughly happy as your father. He did harm to no man. His life was a good life." "Yes, Kingsley." And yet Nansie was not satisfied with herself for being the cause of the conversation drifting into this channel.