He cut his quills with the patience of a monk in the scriptorium, shaving
and altering the nib, lightening and increasing the pressure and
flexibility of the points, till the pen satisfied him, and gave a stroke
both broad and even. Then he made experiments in inks, searching for some
medium that would rival the glossy black letter of the old manuscripts;
and not till he could produce a fair page of text did he turn to the more
entrancing labor of the capitals and borders and ornaments. He mused long
over the Lombardic letters, as glorious in their way as a cathedral, and
trained his hand to execute the bold and flowing lines; and then there
was the art of the border, blossoming in fretted splendor all about the
page. His cousin, Miss Deacon, called it all a great waste of time,
and his father thought he would have done much better in trying to
improve his ordinary handwriting, which was both ugly and illegible.
Indeed, there seemed but a poor demand for the limner's art. He sent some
specimens of his skill to an "artistic firm" in London; a verse of the
"Maud," curiously emblazoned, and a Latin hymn with the notes priced on a
red stave. The firm wrote civilly, telling him that his work, though
good, was not what they wanted, and enclosing an illuminated text. "We
have great demand for this sort of thing," they concluded, "and if you
care to attempt something in this style we should be pleased to look
at it." The said text was "Thou, God, seest me." The letter was of a
degraded form, bearing much the same relation to the true character as a
"churchwarden gothic" building does to Canterbury Cathedral; the colours
were varied. The initial was pale gold, the _h_ pink, the _o_ black, the
_u_ blue, and the first letter was somehow connected with a bird's nest
containing the young of the pigeon, who were waited on by the female
bird.

"What a pretty text," said Miss Deacon. "I should like to nail it up in
my room. Why don't you try to do something like that, Lucian? You might