changed his mind. Of what kind of use was drawing? And then, it would
cost, according to Miss Reade's own account, about two or three hundred
dollars a year for board; all to learn a lot of nonsense. It is true,
when the teacher craftily told him stories of the prices that some
lucky artists received for their work, he felt as though she were
pointing down into a gold mine. But the money in his hand was good
money, and he never sent good money after bad. And so Henrietta's newly
raised hope of being an artist was dashed, and Rob Riley was grievously
disappointed; for he was sure that Henrietta would astonish the
metropolis if once she could take her transcendent ability out of East
Weston into New York. Besides, Rob Riley himself was going off to New
York to develop his own talent by learning the granite cutter's trade.
He confided to Henrietta that he expected to come to something better
than granite cutting, for he had heard that there had been granite
cutters who, being, like himself, good at figures, in time had come to
be great contractors and builders and bosses. He was going to be
something, and when he was settled at work in New York Henrietta had a
letter from him telling that he was learning mechanical drawing in the
Cooper Union night school, and that he got books out of the
Apprentices' Library. He also attended free lectures, and was looking
out for a chance to be something some day. Henrietta carried the letter
about with her, and wished heartily that she also might go to New York,
where she could improve herself and see Rob Riley occasionally.

Now it happened that Mrs. Newton had a cousin, a rich man, in New
York--at least, he seemed rich to those not used to the measure applied
to wealth in a great city. She had not seen him since he left the
little town in western Massachusetts, where they were both brought up.
But she often talked about Cousin John. Whenever she saw his business
advertisements in the papers she started out afresh in her talk about
Cousin John. It is something quite worth the having--a cousin in New
York whose name is in the papers, and who is rich. Whenever Mrs. Jones,
Mrs. Newton's neighbor, talked too ostentatiously about her uncle, who
was both a deacon and a justice of the peace up in New Hampshire, then
Mrs. Newton said something about Cousin John. To save her life she
couldn't imagine how Cousin John lived, except that he kept a carriage
or two, or in what precisely his greatne