I assented with a laugh that I fear was awkward, and for the next ten minutes, while I worked, I heard the light clatter of china and the tinkle of spoons and glass.

Mrs.Monarch assisted her husband--they washed up my crockery, they put it away.

They wandered off into my little scullery, and I afterwards found that they had cleaned my knives and that my slender stock of plate had an unprecedented surface.

When it came over me, the latent eloquence of what they were doing, I confess that my drawing was blurred for a moment--the picture swam.

They had accepted their failure, but they couldn't accept their fate.