that if you were a boy there couldn't be any doubt about
you."

Cornelia laughed. "That was a pretty safe kind of praise. I'm not
likely ever to be a boy." She rose up from where they were sitting
together, and went to put her drawings away in her room. When she came
back, she said, "It would be fun to show him, some day, that even so
low down a creature as a girl could be something."

"I wish you would, Nie," said Mrs. Burton, "I just _wish_ you would.
Why don't you go to New York, this winter, and study! Why don't you
make her, Mrs. Saunders?"

"Who? Me?" said Mrs. Saunders, who sat by, in an indolent abeyance.
"Oh! I ain't allowed to open my mouth any more."

"Well," said Cornelia, "don't be so ungrammatical, then, when you do it
without being allowed, mother."

Mrs. Saunders laughed in lazy enjoyment. "One thing I know; if I had my
way she'd have been in New York studying long ago, instead of fooling
away her time out here, school-teaching."

"And where would you have been, mother?"

"Me?" said Mrs. Saunders again, incorrigibly. "Oh, I guess I should
have been somewhere!"

"Well, I'll tell you what," Mrs. Burton broke in, "Nie must go, and
that's all about it. I know from what Mr. Ludlow said that he believes
she could be an artist. She would have to work hard, but I don't call
teaching school _play_, exactly."

"Indeed it isn't!" said Mrs. Saunders. "I'd sooner set all day at the
machine myself, and dear knows that's trying enough!"

"I'm not afraid of the hard work," said Cornelia.

"What are you afraid of, then?" demanded her mother. "Afraid of
failing?"

"No; of succeeding," answered Cornelia, perversely.

"_I_ can't make the child out," said Mrs. Saunders, with apparent
pleasure in the mystery.

Cornelia went on, at least partially, to explain herself. "I mean,
succeeding in the way women seem to succeed. They make me sick!"

"Oh," said her mother, with sarcasm that could not sustain itself even
by a smile letting Mrs. Burton into the joke, "going to be a Rosa
Bonnhure?"

Cornelia scorned this poor attempt of her mother. "If I can't succeed
as men succeed, and be a great painter, and not just a great _woman_
painter, I'd rather be excused altogether. Even Rosa Bonheur: I don't
believe _her_ horses would have been considered so wonderful if a man
had done them. I guess that's what Mr. Ludlow meant, and I guess he was
right. I guess if a girl wants to turn out an artist she'd better start
b