don't care much
about it either. It looks as if you'd got tired of it
before you finished it."

"Does it?" Elfrida said.

"Now this is a much better thing, in my opinion," her
father went on, standing the picture of an old woman
behind an apple-stall along the wall with the rest "I
don't pretend to be a judge, but I know what I like, and
I like that. It explains itself."

"It's a lovely bit of color," remarked Mrs. Bell.

Elfrida smiled. "Thank you, mamma," she said, and kissed
her.

When the box was exhausted, Mr. Bell walked up and down
for a few minutes in front of the row against the wall,
with his hands in his pockets, reflecting, while Mrs.
Bell discovered new beauties to the author of them.

"We'll hang this lot in the dining-room," he said at
length, "and those black-and-whites with the oak mountings
in the parlor. They'll go best with the wall-paper there."

"Yes, papa."

"And I hope you won't mind, Elfrida," he added, "but I've
promised that they shall have one of your paintings to
raffle off in the bazar for the alterations in the
Sunday-school next week."

"Oh no, papa. I shall be delighted."

Elfrida was sitting beside her mother on the sofa, and
at the dose of this proposition Mr. Bell came and sat
there too. There was a silence for a moment while they
all three confronted the line of pictures leaning against
the wall Then Elfrida began to laugh, and she went on
laughing, to the astonishment of her parents, until the
tears came into her eyes. She stopped as suddenly, kissed
her mother and father, and went upstairs. "I'm afraid
you've hurt Her feelings, Leslie," said Mrs. Bell, when
she had well gone.

But Elfrida's feelings had not been hurt, though one
might say that the evening left her sense of humor rather
sore. At that moment she was dallying with the temptation
to describe the whole scene in a letter to a valued friend
in Philadelphia, who would have appreciated it with mirth.
In the end she did not write. It would have been too
humiliating.

CHAPTER III.

"_Pas mal, parbleu!_" Lucien remarked, with pursed-out
lips, running his fingers through his shock of coarse
hair, and reflectively scratching the top of his big head
as he stepped closer to Nadie Palicsky's elbow, where
she stood at her easel in his crowded atelier. The girl
turned and looked keenly into his face, seeking his eyes,
which were on her work with a considering, interested
look. Satisfied, she sent a gl