word either to me or her sister. * Georgiana would chatter nonsense to her canary bird by the hour, and take no notice of me. But I was determined not to seem at a loss for occupation or amusement: I had brought my drawing materials with me, and they served me
Provided with a case of pencils, and some sheets of paper, I used to take a seat apart from them, near the window, and busy myself in sketching fancy vignettes, representing any scene that happened momentarily to shape itself in the ever-shifting kaleidoscope of imagination:
- a glimpse of sea between two rocks;
- the rising moon, and a ship crossing its disk;
- a group of reeds and water-flags, and a naiad’s head, crowned with lotus-flowers, rising out of them;
- an elf sitting in a hedge-sparrow’s nest, under a wreath of hawthorn-bloom.
One morning I fell to sketching a face: what sort of a face it was to be, I did not care or know. I took a soft black pencil, gave it a broad point, and worked away. Soon I had traced on the paper a broad and prominent forehead and a square lower outline of visage: that contour gave me pleasure; my fingers proceeded actively to fill it with features. * Strongly-marked horizontal eyebrows must be traced under that brow; * then followed, naturally, a well-defined nose, with a straight ridge and full nostrils; * then a flexible-looking mouth, by no means narrow; * then a firm chin, with a decided cleft down the middle of it: * of course, some black whiskers were wanted, and some jetty hair, tufted on the temples, and waved above the forehead. Now for the