And Henrietta went on with her drawing, but without ever saying
anything about a return to Cousin John's. And, indeed, she never did go
back to Cousin John's from that day to this. She spent three years in
Weston. If they were tedious years, she said nothing about them. Rob
came home on Christmas and for a week in summer. Once in a long time he
would run up the Harlem road on Saturday evening. These were white
Sundays when Rob was at home, for then he and Henrietta went to meeting
together, and sat on the porch in the afternoons while Rob told her how
he expected to be somebody some day.
But being somebody is hard work and slow for most of us, as Rob Riley
found out. His salary was not increased very fast, but he made up for
that by steadily increasing his knowledge and his value in the office.
For Rob had discovered that being somebody means being something. You
can't hide any man under a bushel if he has a real light in him.
It was not till last year that Henrietta returned to the city. She is a
student now in oil painting. But she does not live at Cousin John's.
Nor, indeed, does she live in a very fashionable street, if I must
confess it. There are many old houses in New York that have been
abandoned by their owners because of the uptown movement and the
west-side movement of fashion. These houses are as quaint in their
antique interiors as a bric-a-brac cabinet. In an upper story of one of
these subdivided houses Rob Riley and his wife, Henrietta, have two
old-fashioned rooms; the front room is large and airy, with a carved
mantelpiece, the back room small and cosy. The furniture is rather
plain and scant, for Rob has not yet got to be a great engineer working
on his own account. At present he is one of those little fish that the
big fish are made to eat--an obscure man whose brains are carried up to
the credit of his chief. But he is already something, and is sure to be
somebody. And, for that matter, the rooms in the old mansion in De Witt
Place are quite good enough for two stout-hearted young people who are
happy. The walls are well ornamented with pictures from Henrietta's own
brush and pencil. These are not framed, but tacked up wherever the
light is good. The best of them is a chubby little girl with a
droll-serious air, clad in an old-fashioned hood and muffled in cloaks
and shawls. It is a portrait of Periwinkle as she stood that night on
Cousin John's steps when she had come down to see about Henrietta.
Henrietta is just finishing a picture called The Culprit, which she
hopes will be successful. It represents a girl in a country school
arraigned for drawing pictures on a slate. Rob, at least, thinks it
very fine, but he is not a harsh critic of anything Henrietta makes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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