y book. But, being a high-spirited girl, she carefully
concealed her wonder, moving about with apparent nonchalance, as though
she had lived in the enchanted ground all her life. Secretly she
carried on experiments upon water works, gas fixtures, and plate-glass
mirrors, using the inductive method of reasoning, as all intelligent
people have from the beginning, without any of the cumbrous and
pedantic machinery provided for them by Lord Chancellor Bacon.

She was soon at work, but drawing from uninteresting plaster casts of
scroll-work in the lower classes of the School of Design for Women was
not so pleasant as spontaneous picture-making on her slate had been. In
Weston, too, she had been a prodigy; her gift for drawing was little
less than miraculous in the eyes of her companions. But in Cooper
Institute she was one of many, and there were those whom much practice
had rendered more skillful. She would slip away from her work and go
through the alcoves sometimes, on one pretext or another, to envy the
girls who were in their second year, and were drawing from a bust of
Psyche or The Young Augustus, and especially did she wish that she were
one of the favored circle in the Venus Room. She thought it would be
fine to try the statue of the Venus de Milo. But day in and day out she
had to stand before a cast of a meaningless scroll, endeavoring to
represent it on drawing paper. This was no longer play, but work as
tedious as the geography lessons in Weston. There is a great difference
between work and play, though they both may consist in doing the same
thing. Nevertheless Henrietta had positive ability, and the almost
mechanical training of the first months did her good.

But somehow she was not so glad to see Rob Riley, the granite cutter,
as she had expected to be. When Rob called at first to see her, the
maid, who had received many warnings against allowing sneak thieves and
tramps to stand in the hall, did not dare leave him by the hatrack. She
eyed him suspiciously, cross-questioned him sharply, and finally called
the cook upstairs to stand guard over him and the overcoats while she
went to call Henrietta. Poor Rob, already frightened at having to ring
the door-bell of a brown-stone house, stood in the hall fumbling his
hat, while the stalwart cook never once took her eyes off him, but
stood ready to throttle him if he made a motion to seize a coat or to
open the door behind him. Somehow the greeting between the two