lose none of their zest with advancing years, and perhaps to these we
may add the taste for art.

Now to Simon Perkins art was as the very air he breathed. The greatest
painter was, in his eyes, the greatest man that lived. When he left
Oxford, he devoted himself to the profession of painting with
such success as rendered him independent, besides enabling him to
contribute largely to the comfort of two maiden aunts with whom he
lived.

Not without hard work; far from it. There is no pursuit, perhaps,
which demands such constant and unremitting exertion from its
votaries. The ideal to which he strains can never be reached, for his
very successes keep building it yet higher, and a painter is so far
like a baby his whole life through that he is always learning to
_see_.

Simon was still learning to see on the afternoon Dick Stanmore sculled
by his cottage windows--studying the effect of a declining sun on the
opposite elms, not entirely averting his looks from that graceful
girl, who ran into the house to the oarsman's discomfiture, and
missing her more than might have been expected when she vanished
up-stairs. Was not the sun still shining bright on that graceful
feathery foliage? He did not quite think it was.

Presently there came to the door a rustle of draperies, and an elderly
lady, not remarkable for beauty, entered the room. Taking no notice
of Simon, she proceeded to arrange small articles of furniture with a
restless manner that denoted anxiety of mind. At last, stopping short
in the act of dusting a china tea-cup, with a very clean cambric