s some sense in my art-talk."

"Did he really say that? Why, Madge, who knows?"

Madge had shut up her paint-box and moved to the window, where she was
gloomily looking down into her neighbours' backyards.

"If you mean Noah's Dove," she said, "You might as well give him up.
He's come back for the thirteenth time."

Now "Noah's Dove" was the name which Madge had bestowed upon a small
bundle of pen-and-ink sketches which she had been sending about to the
illustrated papers for two or three months past, and which had earned
their name by the persistency with which they had found their way back
again. The girls had both thought them funny and original; indeed
Eleanor, with the partiality of one's best friend, did not hesitate to
pronounce them better than many of the things that got accepted. Up to
this time, however, no editor had seemed disposed to recognise their
merits, and they had been repeatedly and ignominiously rejected.

"But you'll keep on sending them, won't you, Madge?" Eleanor
insisted.

"Of course I shall, as long as there is a picture-paper left in the
country; though the postage does cost an awful lot!"

The sun had set, and a tinge of rosy colour was spreading across the
northern sky behind the chimneys. The girls stood silent for a moment,
watching the colour deepen, while a wistful look came into Eleanor's
face.

"After all, Madge," she said; "it must be nice to have somebody think
for you, even when he doesn't think the way you want him to."

"Oh, of course, Father's a dear. I don't suppose I would swap him off,
even for Paris!"

"I wish I could even remember my father or my mother, or anybody that
really belonged to me!" Eleanor said; then, feeling that she was
making an appeal for sympathy, a thing which she was principled
against doing, she turned her eyes away from the tender, beguiling
colour behind the chimneys, and looked, instead, at the big oil
portrait on the wall. "It's something to have even a painted
grandfather of your own!" she declared.

"How I should love to give you mine!" laughed Madge. "He's such a
horrible daub, and I should so like to have the frame when it comes
time to exhibit! You would not insist upon having him in a frame,
would you, Nell?"

Presently the girls went down-stairs together and Eleanor stayed to
tea, and told the family all about her Paris plans, and how she felt
like a pig to be going without Madge. And all the time, as she talked
to these kindly