Then, again, what a picture she makes, as, flushed with her ride, she leaps from her saddle, and holding her habit with one hand, she strides up the garden walk, with her dogs bounding by her side and jumping for her caresses, for she loves animals as they love her. Could any painter wish for a more perfect type of pure, healthy girlhood? Perhaps, though, he will see more opportunities for his pencil when, clad in a loose-fitting silk shirt of old rose colour, and a white alpaca skirt, she is displaying all the supple grace of her figure on the tennis lawn. How active she is, how skilful and confident her play, how her face glows with pleasure and excitement, and with what cheery banter she keeps up the spirit of the game. While she is playing her personality dominates the lawn, for every bit of her vitality goes into what she is doing at the moment; while she works physically at the play, her merry little mind is finding vent in a quip to this player, a bit of playful sarcasm to another, or a repartee to some comment from the onlookers. No wonder that after tennis she may be seen lolling in a hammock, under shady trees, fast asleep. And how lovely she looks! Our friend the artist should come upon her there, and make a study for a Sleeping Beauty, for painter’s fancy has never yet done justice to the subject, and never will, until he paints the beautiful princess as a fair English girl, asleep in a hammock in a shady garden by the silver Thames. But he must make haste with his sketch, for the sun is going down, and, as the sweet, grey evening comes on apace, Mabel awakes refreshed from her half-hour’s nap, makes her way down to the water, and springs into her punt. The young soldier lounges on the cushions, and she, pricking the bed of the river with the long bamboo, sends the flat-bottomed craft through the water with splendid speed, while her grace and strength suggest some Greek athlete of old rather than a modern English girl. Her figure, with the long pole in her hands, stands out clear against the sky, which is brightest in that hour “between the moondawn and the sundown,” when the spirit of romance is beginning to flit about, whispering its secrets to those hearts that are willing to hear. And who knows whether Mabel’s heart hears or not? She is dreamily silent, and the idle youth in the punt has been bluntly told not to talk, for he could not interpret for her the beautiful mysteries of this hour, “when the twilight hangs half starless.” She is not sentimental, and the romance of her life is as yet the romance of comedy; but there are moments, even for an “awfully jolly girl” like Mabel, when the simple eloquence of Nature is all-sufficient, and any ordinary talk is an intrusion.