"Hush this moment with your babbling, every soul of you," said the teacher, in an under tone: "don't you see there are strangers here? What an unreasonable pack of fools you are! Can I do everybody's piece at once? Learn to have patience, one and all of you, and wait till your turn comes."
Some of the girls tossed their heads and pouted, and some laughed, and some quitted their desks and amused themselves by looking out at the windows. But the instructor turned his back on them, and walked off towards the table at which Mrs. Atmore and her daughter were seated with the portfolios, both making incessant exclamations of "How beautiful!—how elegant!—how sweet!"
"Oh! here are Romeo and Juliet in the tomb scene!" cried Marianne. "Look, mamma, is it not lovely?—the very play in which we saw Cooper and Mrs. Merry. Oh! do let me paint Romeo and Juliet for the dinner set! But stop—here's the Shepherdess of the Alps! how magnificent! I think I would rather do that for the china. And here's Mary Queen of Scots; I remember her ever since I read history. And here are Telemachus and Minerva, just as I translated about them in my Telemaque exercises. Oh! let me do them for the dinner set—sha'n't I. Mr. Gummage?"
"I don't see any figure-pieces in which the colours are bright enough," remarked Mrs. Atmore.
"As to that," observed Gummage—who knew that the burthen of the drawing would eventually fall on him, and who never liked to do figures—"I don't believe that any of these figure pieces would look well if reduced so small as to go on china plates."
"Well,—here are some very fine landscapes," pursued Mrs. Atmore; "Here's the Cascade of Tivoli—and here's a view in Jamaica—and here's Glastonbury Abbey."
"Oh! I dote on abbeys," cried Marianne, "for the sake of Amanda Fitzalan."
"Your papa will not approve of your doing this," observed Mrs. Atmore: "you know, he says that abbeys are nothing but old tumble-down churches."
"If I may not do an abbey, let me do a castle," said Marianne; "there's Conway Castle by moonlight—how natural the moon looks!"
"As to castles," replied Mrs. Atmore, "you know your papa says they are no better than old jails. He hates both abbeys and castles."