But when a week had passed she suddenly got out her material and began to draw. Periwinkle was set up first for a model, then her father and her mother, and then the dog, as he lay sleeping before the fire, had his portrait taken, to Periwinkle's delight. So persistent was her ambitious industry that every living thing on the place came in for a sketch. But Periwinkle was the favorite. Rob Riley came home for July and August, the work in the yard being dull. He kept aloof from Henrietta, and she nodded to him with a severe and almost disdainful air that made him wretched. After three or four weeks of this coolness, during which Henrietta got a reputation for pride in the whole country, Rob grew desperate. What did he care for the "stuck-up" girl? He would have it out, anyhow, the next time he had a chance. They met one day on the little bridge that crossed the brook near the schoolhouse. Henrietta nodded a bare recognition. "You didn't treat me that way once, Henrietta. What's the matter? Have I done anything wrong? Can't you be friendly?" "Why don't _you_ be friendly?" said the girl, looking down. "I--I?" said Rob. "You haven't spoken to me since you came home." "Well, that isn't my fault; you wouldn't look at me. I'm not going to run after a person that lives in a fine house and that only nods her head at me." "I don't live in a fine house, but in that old frame." "Well, why don't you be friendly?" "It isn't a girl's place to be friendly first, is it?" Rob stared at her. "But you had other young men come to see you in town, and--you know I couldn't." "I don't live in town now." "What made you come home?" "If I'd wanted to I might have stayed there and had 'other young men,' as you call them, coming to see me yet." Rob gasped, but said nothing. "Are you going over to Mr. Brown's?" asked Henrietta, to break the awkward silence that followed, at the same time moving toward home. "Well--no," said Rob; "I think I'm going to your house, if you've no objection," and he laughed, a foolish little laugh. "Periwinkle was asking about you this morning," said Henrietta evasively as they walked on toward Mr. Newton's. Having once fallen into the old habit of going to Mr. Newton's, Rob could never get out of the way of walking down that lane. Just to see how Henrietta got on with her drawing, as he said, he went there every evening. He confided to Henrietta that he had shown such proficiency in "figures" in the night school that he was to have a place in a civil engineer's office when he returned to the city in the fall. It wasn't much of a place; the salary was small, but it gave him an opportunity to study and a chance of being something some day.