e-rest' affair. I want you to learn
to finish up your work yourself. Do you think you will care to take so
much trouble?"

Nan nodded energetically.

"Very well, then. So it stands. If you are willing to learn I'll
gladly teach."

"Who taught you?" asked the girl curiously.

Miss Blake shook her head. "Just a man whom I paid for his trouble,"
she returned simply. "I wanted to learn, and so I went into a gallery
and got some experience, and then came away and experimented on my own
account. It has taken me years, and I am still working hard at it, for
I believe in never being satisfied with anything less than the best one
can do."

Nan blinked. She herself believed in being satisfied with whatever
came easiest, unless it was in the way of some sport, where she liked
to excel.

"How jolly it must be to travel about--all over the world," said she,
musingly. "When I'm grown up I guess I'll be a governess, or a
companion, or something, just as you are, and get a place with some
awfully nice people who will take me everywhere. Was it nice where you
were before you came here? Were there any girls? Why did you leave?"

Miss Blake looked troubled, but Nan was not used to noticing other
people's moods, and did not even stop to hear the replies to her own
questions. "If you've been all over the world, you'll know where my
father is, and can tell me about it. Oh, do, do! Show me some
pictures of India, won't you please? Just think, I haven't seen my
father for two years, and he won't be home until next autumn--almost a
year from now. You ought to see him! He is the best man in the
world--only I guess he is lonely, because my mother died when I was a
baby, and he hasn't any one to keep house for him but Delia and me.
Mr. Turner says he has lost a lot of money lately, too. I guess that's
why he went to India. If I had been older he would have taken me. But
he had to leave me here with Delia. Delia has been in our family, for,
oh, ever so many years. She first came to live here when my mother was
a young girl. She says it was the jolliest house you ever saw. My
grandfather and grandmother were alive then, and mamma had a young
friend, who was an orphan, who lived with them. They loved her just as
if she had been their own child, and she and my mother were so fond of
each other that--well, Delia says it was beautiful to see them
together. And such times! There were parties and all sorts of things
a