saints can do no
more," cried Madge breezily. "I designed Christmas-cards and composed
sensible verses to be printed on them; not the--

"May all your life be bright and gay,
As cloudless as a summer day!

"Kind of business, but reasonable good wishes which had some chance of
being fulfilled. The first firm kept them for months, and could not be
induced to return them until I had written four times, and the second
said that it was too late in the season to consider new designs. I have
sent headings and initial letters to magazines, and have had heaps of
compliments, but nothing more substantial. I have likewise had heaps of
snubs at the Slade, but I bob up again like a cork after each fresh
dousing, and am more determined than ever to get on and make a name.
The mistake we have made is in being too proud to begin at the
beginning. Hope is the most humble-minded of the family; but she
expected to become well-known in one season, and to sell her song by the
hundreds. Theo wanted to write for the _Casket_, and I hoped to be
exhibiting before now. We must crawl down, and be content to drudge
before we soar. My serious studies leave much to be desired, but I can
caricature with the best. The other day I amused myself in the lunch
hour by drawing the pupils in the life, and one of the girls' carried
off the sketch and stuck it on her easel. Just then in came Pepper, as
we call him--he is so horribly stinging and bitter in his criticisms--
and walked straight up to look at it. Oh, my heart! He was quite
silent, but I saw his shoulders shaking, and when he turned round his
face was red. `Whose work is this?' he asked; and I suppose guilt was
written large on my expressive features, for he came up to me and said,
`I shall have to inflict a punishment for this, Miss Charrington. I
cannot have my pupils ridiculed and their work interrupted in this
manner. The punishment is--that you draw a caricature of me on the
other side of the sheet!'

"He put the paper on my easel, and all the girls giggled and peered
round to witness my collapse. But I wasn't going to be floored by a
little thing like that. He stuck his hands in his pockets and stood
opposite me, and I set to work to draw him then and there. He was easy
to caricature, for he has a curious, sheep-dog kind of face, with two
deep lines running down from the nose, humped-up shoulders, and a mop of
hair. It really was like him, and what I call a _polite