te casts loomed conspicuous
in the cold north light above the clutter of easels, stools and
drawing-boards that encompassed the silent, intent workers.

"I'm not half so calm as I look, Miss Pat," she said, seriously. "I'm
more excited than I ever was in my life. It's too deep to come to the
surface, I guess. I haven't any words for it."

Patricia nodded approval.

"That's your 'sensitive, artistic temperament,' as Mrs. Hand calls it.
It must be awfully trying, though, not to be able to babble when you're
pleased. It's such a relief to get it out of your system. I'd simply
burst if I tried to keep quiet when I felt excited."

Elinor smiled absently, and then burst out fervently, "Isn't it all
gloriously workmanlike--the bare walls and smudged doors and the painty
smell, too? It's so serious. Outside, the people regard a picture as
a mere luxury, but in here, _here_," she said, exultantly, "it is
absolutely the necessary thing in life."

Patricia shut her door with a snap and turned to her sister with a
glowing face, sweeping her stray tendrils back with an eager gesture.

"I know it!" she cried. "It makes even me feel as though I could turn
off masterpieces _instanter_. Merely to look at those lumps of clay in
the modeling room made me simply _ache_ to get my hands into them. I
was enchanted the moment I came in here with you this morning, never
dreaming that I should be so lucky as to be one of the illustrious band
myself. You're a perfect duck, Norn, to let me tag along after you
here."

"You might as well do that as anything else," said Elinor, rather
absently. "The best of it is that we shall be together. It will be
such fun to see how we each get along."

"'We!'" echoed Patricia. "You mean how _you_ get along. I shan't
count at all. I may have to give up when I actually get at it." Then
with a swift change of spirit she added: "All the same, if I couldn't
do better than some of those smudgy celebrities in the modeling room
were doing, I'd feel pretty sorry for myself. Such forlorn, lop-sided
caricatures of human beings I never saw. I don't see how they can do
them."

Elinor's soft laugh rippled out. "It's clear that you haven't tried to
do it, or you'd see how easy it is to make caricatures instead of
portraits," she said. "I didn't think they were so very bad."

"I'd be ashamed to have anyone see them if I'd done them," declared
Patricia, unconvinced. "They seemed quite cocky over