,--where are the port-crayons to hold the chalk? Down in the
painting-room, of course. No! no! don't trouble Madonna to fetch them.
Tell her to poke the fire instead: I'll be back directly." And Mr. Blyth
skipped out of the room as nimbly as if he had been fifteen instead of
fifty.

No sooner was Valentine's back turned than Mrs. Blyth's hand was passed
under the pretty swan's-down coverlet that lay over her couch, as if in
search of something hidden beneath it. In a moment the hand reappeared,
holding a chalk drawing very neatly framed. It was Madonna's copy from
the head of the Venus de' Medici--the same copy which Zack had honored
with his most superlative exaggeration of praise, at his last visit
to the studio. She had not since forgotten, or altered her purpose of
making him a present of the drawing which he had admired so much. It
had been finished with the utmost care and completeness which she could
bestow upon it; had been put into a very pretty frame which she had paid
for out of her own little savings of pocket-money; and was now hidden
under Mrs. Blyth's coverlet, to be drawn forth as a grand surprise for
Zack, and for Valentine too, on that very evening.

After looking once or twice backwards and forwards between the copyist
and the copy, her pale kind face beaming with the quiet merriment that
overspread it, Mrs. Blyth laid down the drawing, and began talking with
her fingers to Madonna.

"So you will not even let me tell Valentine who this is a present for?"
were the first words which she signed.

The girl was sitting with her back half turned on the drawing; glancing
at it quickly from time to time with a strange shyness and indecision,
as if the work of her own hands had undergone some transformation which
made her doubt whether she was any longer privileged to look at it.
She shook her head in reply to the question just put to her, then moved
round suddenly on her chair; her fingers playing nervously with the
fringes of the coverlet at her side.

"We all like Zack," proceeded Mrs. Blyth, enjoying the amusement which
her womanly instincts extracted from Madonna's confusion; "but you
must like him very much, love, to take more pains with this particular
drawing than with any drawing you ever did before."

This time Madonna neither looked up nor moved an inch in her chair, her
fingers working more and more nervously amid the fringe; her treacherous
cheeks, neck, and bosom answered for her.

Mrs. B