When the week of delay had elapsed, and when Mrs. Blyth felt strong enough to receive company in her room, Valentine sent the promised invitation to Zack which summoned him to his first drawing-lesson.

The locality in which the family drawing academy was to be held deserves a word of preliminary notice. It formed the narrow world which bounded, by day and night alike, the existence of the painter’s wife.

By throwing down a partition-wall, Mrs. Blyth’s room had been so enlarged, as to extend along the whole breadth of one side of the house, measuring from the front to the back garden windows. Considerable as the space was which had been thus obtained, every part of it from floor to ceiling was occupied by objects of beauty proper to the sphere in which they were placed: some, solid and serviceable, where usefulness was demanded; others light and elegant, where ornament³ alone was necessary—and all won gloriously by Valentine’s brush; by the long, loving, unselfish industry of many years. Mrs. Blyth’s bed, like everything else that she used in her room, was so arranged as to offer her the most perfect comfort and luxury attainable⁴ in her suffering condition. The framework was broad enough to include within its dimensions a couch for day and a bed for night. Her reading easel and work-table could be moved within reach, in whatever position she lay. Immediately above her hung an extraordinary complication of loose cords, which ran through ornamental⁵ pulleys of the quaintest⁶ kind, fixed⁷ at different places in the ceiling, and communicating with the bell, the door, and a pane⁸ of glass in the window which opened easily on hinges. These were Valentine’s own contrivances to enable his wife to summon attendance, admit visitors, and regulate the temperature of her room at will, by merely pulling at any one of the loops hanging within reach of her hand, and neatly¹⁰ labeled with ivory tablets,

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