it easy to smile.

“If you marry, dear, it is not likely you’ll marry in order to take lessons in drawing. Twenty-five is not 24 old. If you still desire to study art you will be able to do so.”

24

“Twenty-five!” repeated Rue, aghast. “I’ll be an old woman.”

“Many begin their life’s work at an older age––”

“Mother! I’d rather marry somebody and begin to study art. Oh, don’t you think that even now I could support myself by making pictures for magazines? Don’t you, mother dear?”

“Rue, as your father explained, a special course of instruction is necessary before one can become an artist––”

“But I do draw very nicely!” She slipped from her chair, ran to the old secretary where the accumulated masterpieces of her brief career were treasured, and brought them for her parents’ inspection, as she had brought them many times before.

Her father looked at them listlessly; he did not understand such things. Her mother took them one by one from Ruhannah’s eager hands and examined these grimy Records of her daughter’s childhood.

There were drawings of every description in pencil, in crayon, in mussy water-colours, done on scraps of paper of every shape and size. The mother knew them all by heart, every single one, but she examined each with a devotion and an interest forever new.

There were many pictures of the cat; many of her parents, too—odd, shaky, smeared portraits all out of proportion, but usually recognisable.

A few landscapes varied the collection—a view or two of the stone bridge opposite, a careful drawing of the ruined paper mill. But the majority of the subjects were purely imaginary; pictures of demons and angels, of damsels and fairy princes—paragons of 25 beauty—with castles on adjacent crags and swans adorning convenient ponds.

25

Her mother rose after a few moments, laid aside the pile of drawings, went to the kitchen and returned with her daughter’s schoolbooks and lunch basket.

“Rue, you’ll be late again. Get on your rubbers immediately.”

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