nce hungry to know
things. That is the only way I can describe her, but you will
understand. She has had absolutely no advantages; she doesn't even know
what culture means, or social instinct, or any of the qualities you were
born with, my dear boy; but she feels vaguely that she has missed
something, and she is reaching out gropingly and trying to find it. I
like the spirit. It strikes me as American in the best sense--that young
longing to make up in some way for her deficiencies and lack of
opportunities, that gallant determination to get the better of her
upbringing and her surroundings. A fight always appeals to me, you know.
I like the courage that is in the girl--I am sure it is courage--and her
straightforward effort to get the best out of life, to learn the things
she was never taught, to make herself over if need be."

"Is this Patty Vetch, Corinna, or your own dramatic instinct?"

"Oh, it's Patty Vetch! I had no interest in her whatever. Why should I
have had? But I liked the way she went straight as a dart at the thing
she wanted. There was no affectation about her, no pretence of being
what she was not. She asked about prints because she saw the name and
she didn't know what it meant. She would have asked about Browning, or
Swinburne, or Meredith in exactly the same way if this had been a
book-shop. She wanted to know the difference between a mezzotint and a
stipple print. She wanted to know all about the portraits too, and the
names of the painters and who Lady Hamilton was and the Duchess of
Bedford and the Ladies Waldegrave and 'Serena,' and if Morland's
Cottagers were really as happy as they were painted? She asked as many
questions as Socrates, and I fear got as inadequately answered."

"Well, she didn't strike me as in the least like that; but you can be a
great help to her if she is really in earnest."

"She didn't strike you like that, my dear, simply because you are a man,
and some girls are never really themselves with men; they are for ever
acting a part; a vulgar part, I admit, but one they have learned before
they were born, the instinctive quarry eluding the instinctive hunter.
The girl is naturally shy; I could tell that, and she covers it with a
kind of boldness that isn't--well, particularly attractive to one of
your fastidious mind. Yet there is something rather taking about her.
She reminds me of a small, bright tropical bird."

"Of a Virginia redbird, you mean."

"A redbird? Then y