w days that yet remain to me,
And in death's terrors, may thy hand be near!
Thou knowest that I have no hope but thee!'

In the Italian this is very great poetry, Miss Brooke, and if you don't
think it so in my English, try and see if you can do better."

"Very well," said Catherine, coolly. "I've no doubt we can do it just as
well as you and Mr. Wharton. Can't we, Esther?"

"You are impudent enough to make St. Cecilia blush," said Esther, who
happened to be wondering whether she might dare to put a little blush
into the cheeks of the figure on which she was painting. "You never read
a word of Italian in your little life."

"No! But you have!" replied Catherine, as though this were final.

"The libretto of Lucia!" said Esther with scorn.

"No matter!" resumed Catherine. "Bring me the books, Mr. Hazard, and I
will translate one of those sonnets if I have to shut up Esther in a
dark closet."

"Catherine! Don't make me ridiculous!" said Esther; but Catherine was
inspired by an idea, and would not be stopped.

"Bring me the volume now, Mr. Hazard! You shall have your sonnet for
Sunday's sermon."

"Don't do it, Mr. Hazard!" exhorted Esther solemnly. "It is one of her
Colorado jokes. She does not know what a sonnet is. She thinks it some
kind of cattle-punching."

"If I do not give you that sonnet," cried Catherine, "I will give you
leave to have me painted as much like an old skeleton as Mr. Wharton
chooses."

"Done!" said Hazard, who regarded this as at least one point worth
gaining. "You shall have the books. I want to see Wharton's triumph."

"But if I do poetry for you," continued Catherine, "you must do painting
for me."

"Very well!" said Hazard. "What shall it be?"

"If I am Laura," said Catherine, "I must have a Petrarch. I want you to
put him up here on the wall, looking at me, as he did in the church
where he first saw me."

"But what will Wharton and the committee say?" replied Hazard, startled
at so monstrous a demand.

"I don't believe Mr. Wharton will object," answered Catherine. "He will
be flattered. Don't you see? He is to be Petrarch."

"Oh!" cried Hazard, with a stare. "Now I understand. You want me to
paint Wharton as a scriptural character looking across to Miss Dudley's
Cecilia."

"You are very slow!" said Catherine. "I think you might have seen it
without making me tell you."

To a low-church evangelical parson this idea might have seemed
inexpressibly shocking, b