, bad, or indifferent, the boy is
essentially an artist--an artist to his fingers' ends."

"Why, then," asked Rowland, "does n't he deliberately take up the
chisel?"

"For several reasons. In the first place, I don't think he more than
half suspects his talent. The flame is smouldering, but it is never
fanned by the breath of criticism. He sees nothing, hears nothing, to
help him to self-knowledge. He 's hopelessly discontented, but he
does n't know where to look for help. Then his mother, as she one
day confessed to me, has a holy horror of a profession which consists
exclusively, as she supposes, in making figures of people without their
clothes on. Sculpture, to her mind, is an insidious form of immorality,
and for a young man of a passionate disposition she considers the law a
much safer investment. Her father was a judge, she has two brothers at
the bar, and her elder son had made a very promising beginning in the
same line. She wishes the tradition to be perpetuated. I 'm pretty sure
the law won't make Roderick's fortune, and I 'm afraid it will, in the
long run, spoil his temper."

"What sort of a temper is it?"

"One to be trusted, on the whole. It is quick, but it is generous. I
have known it to breathe flame and fury at ten o'clock in the evening,
and soft, sweet music early on the morrow. It 's a very entertaining
temper to observe. I, fortunately, can do so dispassionately, for I 'm
the only person in the place he has not quarreled with."

"Has he then no society? Who is Miss Garland, whom you asked about?"

"A young girl staying with his mother, a sort of far-away cousin; a good
plain girl, but not a person to delight a sculptor's eye. Roderick has
a goodly share of the old Southern arrogance; he has the aristocratic
temperament. He will have nothing to do with the small towns-people; he
says they 're 'ignoble.' He cannot endure his mother's friends--the
old ladies and the ministers and the tea-party people; they bore him to
death. So he comes and lounges here and rails at everything and every
one."

This graceful young scoffer reappeared a couple of evenings later, and
confirmed the friendly feeling he had provoked on Rowland's part. He
was in an easier mood than before, he chattered less extravagantly, and
asked Rowland a number of rather naif questions about the condition of
the fine arts in New York and Boston. Cecilia, when he had gone, said
that this was the wholesome effect of Rowland's prais