t highly-born, richly-endowed girl within the precincts--and the
school was rather aristocratic--would no more have ventured on being
rude to Miss Rose Millar, the junior drawing-mistress, than the girl
would have presumed to stamp her foot at one of the Misses Stone. If
Rose had dropped her pencil in the course of her work, the highly-born
pupil, by force of example, if for no other reason, would immediately
have risen and picked it up, though she might not have made the speech
about a Titian being worthy to be served by a Caesar. In fact Rose was in
danger of being killed with kindness. Soon she was conscious of
something choking, crushing, dwarfing in this artificial system. This
was made more conspicuous to her by the choice of art subjects for the
girls' study. There was no end of flower and fruit pieces. There were
the stereotyped noble ruins, and cottages, either embowered in roses or
half-buried in snow. There were the Dutch and Venetian boats which had
never sailed on familiar waters. Stags abounded, and Rose ceased to ask
why so many of them stood at bay. The sleeping baby, which might have
been a dead baby or a stone baby, was there; so was the long-nosed,
wooden-legged collie, watching the shepherd's plaid. With what a lively
hatred Rose grew to hate that collie!

Rose felt herself "cribbed, cabined, and confined" when she came from
the comparative open air and robust life of Mr. St. Foy's classes. Yet
even these were not the world of art. She got nervous in the fear of
unworthily committing solecisms against the silken softness and steely
rigidity of the Misses Stone's shrine. She thought if she caught up and
reproduced any of Hester's vagabond notes--the Misses Stone were
necessarily slightly acquainted with Hester, of whom, however, they
never spoke--it would be like throwing a bombshell among these quiet,
unalterable proprieties. She came to have a morbid, feverish craving to
do it, or to see some other person do it. For instance, if young Lady
Maud Devereux would but bid Rose tie her shoe, or even if she would
contradict Miss Stone, or Miss Lucilla, or Miss Charlotte, without
prefacing the contradiction by "I beg your pardon!"

At last these two days a week of giving lessons at the Misses Stone's,
from being merely the agreeable lucrative variety in her life which they
had promised to be, became gray days of penance to Rose Millar, when she
felt she was under a spell, and did her duty badly. She ceased