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Then comes my drawing-master; he teaches me to paint flowers and shells, and to draw ruins and buildings, and to take views. He is a good soul, and is finishing a set of pictures, and half a dozen fire-screens, which I began for mamma.
It must have been at least fifteen years since the latest of those purchases, but Miss Linnet's skill in fancy-work appeared to have gone through more numerous phases than her literary taste; for the japanned boxes, the alum and sealing-wax baskets, the fan-dolls, the 'transferred' landscapes on the fire-screens, and the recent bouquets of wax-flowers, showed a disparity in freshness which made them referable to widely different periods.
And the main thing is that such work is very readily taken for fire-screens, albums, lamp-shades, curtains and other rubbish, and the pay is decent." "After all, that's a sort of a trade, too," agreed Lichonin, and stroked his beard in meditation. "But, to confess, here's what I wanted to do.
They have not even a cathedral, with eleven tons of solid silver archbishops in the back room; and they do not show you any moldy buildings that are seven thousand years old; nor any smoke-dried old fire-screens which are chef d'oeuvres of Reubens or Simpson, or Titian or Ferguson, or any of those parties; and they haven't any bottled fragments of saints, and not even a nail from the true cross.
The wine was of his own sending, and so were the China fire-screens, and the sandalwood workbox, and the ivory cardcase, and those magnificent pink and white chessmen, carved like little sepoys and mandarins, with the castles on elephants' backs, George the Third and his queen in pink ivory, against the Emperor of China and lady in white the delight of Clive's childhood, the chief ornament of the old spinster's sitting-room.
And, alack! in that house without a mistress the small conveniences of life, such as fire-screens, were often overlooked. The Master did not possess any. In a pale exasperation Swinburne folded the Times over the back of his chair and sat down again. Vain was the effort! The room was narrow, the party large, and the servants, pushing by, had soon dislodged the Times.
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