nal.

"No, ma'am."

"You draw well; you ought to have a chance. You'll make an artist some
day. Your cow is not quite right. If you'll bring the picture to me
after school I'll show you some things about it. I think you'd better
put it away now till you get your geography lesson."

Henrietta, full of wonder at finding her art no longer regarded as a
sin, put the slate into the desk, and cheerfully resumed the study of
the boundaries and chief products of North Carolina, while Miss Reade
returned to the hearing of the third-reader class.

"I say, Henrietta, she's j-u-s-t s-p-l-e-n-d-i-d!" whispered Maria
Thomas. And Rob Riley thought Miss Reade was almost as fine as
Henrietta herself.

"You see," said Miss Reade to Henrietta after school, "that the hind
legs of your cow look longer than the fore legs."

"There's something wrong." said the girl, "but that isn't it. I've
measured, and the cow's just as high before as behind, though she
doesn't look so."

"Yes, but you've put her head a little toward you. The hind legs ought
to seem shorter at a little distance off. Now try it. Make her not so
high from the ground behind," and Miss Reade proceeded to explain one
or two principles of perspective. When Henrietta had experimented on
her cow and saw the result, she was delighted.

"I don't know much about drawing," said Miss Reade, "but I've a set of
drawing books and some drawing cards. Now, if you'll let drawing alone
till you get your lessons each day, I'll lend you my drawing books and
give you all the help I can."

When the old man Newton heard that the "new school ma'am" was
permitting Henrietta to draw "fool picters on her slate," he was sure
that it never would work. He believed in breaking a child's will, for
his part, "though the one that broke Henriettar's will would hev to git
up purty airly in the mornin' now, certain," he added with a grim
smile. But when the old man found Henrietta unexpectedly industrious,
toiling over her studies at night, he was surprised beyond measure; and
when he understood the compact by which studies were to come first and
drawing afterward, he winked his eye knowingly at his wife.

"Who'd a thought that little red-headed school ma'am would a ben so
cute? She knows the very bait for Henriettar now. That woman would do
to trade hosses."

But when the little schoolmistress seriously proposed that he should
send Henrietta down to New York to take lessons in drawing, he quickly