On this day, with his overcoat and hat, Fairfax had laid by a paper parcel. It was stormy, and around the upper windows the snow blew and the winds cried. Propped up by pillows, Gardiner, in his red flannel dressing-gown, nestled in the corner of the sofa. Antony regarded Bella, red as a cardinal bird in her homely dress; he had seen her wear no other dress and would have regretted the change. "Oh, I'll do Gardiner one of these days, but I reckon I'll make another study to-day." "Me?" Bella shook back her mane. Her cousin considered her with an impersonal eye, whose expression she did not understand to be the artist's gauge and measure. "Bella," he said shortly, "I'm going to make a cast of your foot." She was sitting on the sofa and drew her feet under her. "Only just my foot, Cousin Antony, not all of me?" "Come now," said the sculptor, "it won't take long. It's heaps of sport." He unrolled the paper parcel he had brought, unfolding a mass of snowy, delectable looking powder. "Ask old Ann to fetch us a couple of basins, deep ones, some water and a little oil and salt." When after toilsome journeys up and down the stairs of the four-storied house, the things had been fetched, Fairfax mixed his plaster, eagerly watched by the children. Perched on the edge of the divan, Bella brooded over the foaming, marvellous concoction, into whose milky bubbles she saw art fall like a star--a genius blossom like a flower. She gazed at Antony's hands as they plunged in and came out dripping; gazed as though she expected him to bring forth some peerless image his touch had called to life. His shirt sleeves rolled up over his fine arms, his close high-cropped and sunny hair warm upon his brow, his eyes sparkling, he bent an impassioned face over the milky plaster. "Now," Fairfax said, "hurry along, Bella, I'm ready!" She responded quietly. "I'm here. It's like a snow pie, Cousin Antony." "Take off your shoe and stocking." "Cousin Antony!" A painful flush of red, the drawing under her more closely of the little legs, showed how far she had been from comprehending. "Casts are taken from life, Bella," informed her cousin practically, "you'll see. I'm going to make a model from life, then watch what happens. I reckon you're not afraid, honey?" Gardiner kicked his foot out from under the rugs. "Do mine." With the first timidity Antony had seen her display, Bella divested herself of her shoe and drew off her dark stocking, and held him out the little naked foot, a charming, graceful concession to art. "It's clean," she said simply. He took it in his big hand and it lay like a pearl and coral thing in his palm. Bella did not hear his murmured artistic ecstasies. Fairfax deftly oiled the foot, kneeling before it as at a shrine of beauty. He placed it in one of the basins and poured the plaster slowly over it, sternly bidding her to control her giggles and her "ouches" as it could not harm.