l, tall and fair and earnest, painting with an ardour
and concentration which was all too sure to beguile her into her
besetting sin of "exaggerating details," she wielded both brush- and
palette-arm with a genial disregard of consequences. Nor could one
count upon her confining her activities to one location. Like all the
students, she was in the habit of backing away from her natural
anchorage from time to time, the better to judge of her work, and not
one of them all had such a fatal tendency to come up against an
unoffending easel in the rear, sending canvas and paint-tubes rattling
upon the floor.

Instantly she would drop upon her knees, overcome with contrition, and
help collect the scattered treasures, giving many a jar or joggle to
neighbouring easels in the process.

"It's a shame, Miss Folsom!" she would cry, struggling to her feet
again, still clutching her beloved palette, which seemed fairly to
rain colours on every surrounding object. "It's a shame! But if you
will just cast your eye upon that thing of mine, you will perceive
that it was the recklessness of desperation. Look at it! There's not a
value in it!"

Artful Madge was always forgiven, and no one ever thought of calling
her awkward, and when, in the early autumn, a Saturday sketching club
was organised, it was christened "The Artful Daubers" in honor of
Madge, and she was unanimously elected president.

The girls were not in the habit of paying much attention to chance
visitors who came in from time to time and made the perilous passage
among the easels, and lucky was the "parent" or "art-patron" who
escaped without a streak of colour on some portion of his raiment.
When Mrs. Oliver Jacques looked in upon them one memorable morning in
February no premonition of great things to come stirred the company;
only indifferent glances were directed upon her by the few who deigned
to observe her at all. And this pleased Mrs. Oliver Jacques very much
indeed.

Yet, if the girls had paused to consider,--a thing which they never
did when there was a model on the platform,--they would have been
aware that their visitor was a person of importance in the world of
Art, for importance in no other world would have secured to her the
personal escort of Mr. Salome, the adored teacher of their class. Yet
Mrs. Jacques was a charming little old lady who would have commanded
attention on her own merits in any less preoccupied assembly than
that of the studio. Her e