t. "I don't think
I'm very proud. I used to be proud when I was little;--I guess you
ought to have asked me then."

"Oh, yes! Tell me about yourself!" Miss Maybough implored again, but
she went on as before without giving Cornelia any chance to reply. "Of
course, when I say mamma, I mean my step-mother. She's very good to me,
but she doesn't understand me. You'll like her. I'll tell you what sort
of a person she is." She did so at such length that the lunch hour
passed before she finished, and a hush fell upon all the babbling
voices about, as the monitor came back to her place.

Toward the end of the afternoon the monitor's vigilance relaxed again,
and Miss Maybough began to talk again. "If you want to be anything by
the Synthesis standards," she said, "you've got to keep this up a whole
year, you know." It was now four o'clock, and Cornelia had been working
steadily since eleven, except for the half-hour at lunch-time. "They'll
see how well you draw; you needn't be afraid of their not doing that;
and they'll let you go on to the round at once, perhaps. But if you're
truly Synthetic in spirit, you won't want to. You'll want to get all
you can out of the block; and it'll take you a year to do that; then
another year for the full length, you know. At first we only had the
block here, and a good many people think now that the full length
Preparatory encroaches on the Antique. Sometimes they even let you put
in backgrounds here, but it don't matter much: when the instructor in
the Antique gets hold of you he makes you unlearn everything you've
learnt in the full-length. _He's_ grand."

A girl who was working at the other end of the table said with a
careless air, "They told me I might go up to the Antique to-day."

"Lida!" Miss Maybough protested, in a voice hoarse with admiration.

"Yes; but I'm not going."

"_Why_ not? I should think you would be so proud. _How_ did they come
to tell you?"

"Oh, they just said I might. But I'm not going. They're so severe in
the Antique. They just discourage you."

"Yes, that is so," said Miss Maybough, with a sigh of solemn joy. "They
make you feel as if you couldn't draw at all."

"Yes," said the other girl. "They act as if you didn't know a thing."

"I _wouldn't_ go," said Miss Maybough.

"I don't know. Perhaps I may." The girl went on drawing, and Miss
Maybough turned to Cornelia again.

"Towards the end of your third year--or perhaps you don't like to have
your future