l study! Read the damned dictionary right through." He
crossed his legs and bent over, clutching his ankle with both hands. "I
know what you mean. I've been rushing from picture to picture, like a
kid let loose in an art gallery for the first time. You see, it's so
awful recent that I've found there was a world--well, a world where
beautiful things counted. I was on the farm till I was nineteen. Dad is
a good farmer, but nothing else. Do you know why he first sent me off to
learn tailoring? I wanted to study drawing, and he had a cousin that'd
made a lot of money tailoring out in Dakota, and he said tailoring was
a lot like drawing, so he sent me down to a punk hole called Curlew,
to work in a tailor shop. Up to that time I'd only had three months'
schooling a year--walked to school two miles, through snow up to my
knees--and Dad never would stand for my having a single book except
schoolbooks.

"I never read a novel till I got 'Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall' out
of the library at Curlew. I thought it was the loveliest thing in the
world! Next I read 'Barriers Burned Away' and then Pope's translation of
Homer. Some combination, all right! When I went to Minneapolis, just
two years ago, I guess I'd read pretty much everything in that Curlew
library, but I'd never heard of Rossetti or John Sargent or Balzac or
Brahms. But----Yump, I'll study. Look here! Shall I get out of this
tailoring, this pressing and repairing?"

"I don't see why a surgeon should spend very much time cobbling shoes."

"But what if I find I can't really draw and design? After fussing around
in New York or Chicago, I'd feel like a fool if I had to go back to work
in a gents' furnishings store!"

"Please say 'haberdashery.'"

"Haberdashery? All right. I'll remember." He shrugged and spread his
fingers wide.

She was humbled by his humility; she put away in her mind, to take out
and worry over later, a speculation as to whether it was not she who
was naive. She urged, "What if you do have to go back? Most of us do! We
can't all be artists--myself, for instance. We have to darn socks, and
yet we're not content to think of nothing but socks and darning-cotton.
I'd demand all I could get--whether I finally settled down to designing
frocks or building temples or pressing pants. What if you do drop back?
You'll have had the adventure. Don't be too meek toward life! Go! You're
young, you're unmarried. Try everything! Don't listen to Nat Hicks and
Sam Cl