"I'm not wicked," said Anne, composedly, "and the next time you use me for a model, Judy, I wish you would get an easier place than on that old rock." "You shall be Juliet in the tomb," promised Judy, "and you can go to sleep if you want to." But she let Anne rest for awhile, and used Perkins as a model. Her first sketch of him was very clever--a sketch in which the stately butler posed as "The Neptune of the Kitchen." He sat on a great turtle, with a toasting-fork instead of a trident, with a necklace of oyster crackers, a crown of pickles, and a smile that was truly Perkins's own. That sketch taught Judy her niche in the temple of art. She was not destined to be a great artist, but she had a keen wit, and a knack of discovering fun in everything, and in later years it was in caricature, not unkind, but truly humorous, that Judy made her greatest successes, and achieved some little fame. CHAPTER XVIII JUDY KEEPS A PROMISE "What's your talent, Anne?" asked Judy, one evening, as she lay on the couch reading "Sesame and Lilies." It was raining again outside, but in the fireplace a great fire was blazing, and rosy little Anne was in front of it, popping corn. "Haven't any," said Anne, watching the white kernels bob up and down. "I can't draw and I can't play, and I can't sing or converse--or anything." Judy looked at her thoughtfully. "Well, we will have to find something that you can do," she said, for Judy liked to lead and have others follow, and having decided upon art as her life-work, she wanted Anne to choose a similar path. "I wish I could take up bookbinding or wood-carving, or--or dentistry--" "Why, Judy Jameson." Anne turned an amazed hot face towards her. "Why, Judy, you wouldn't like to pull teeth, would you?" "It isn't what we like to do, Ruskin says," said Judy, calmly, "it's usefulness that counts." "Oh, well, I can wash dishes and dust and take care of old people and pets," said placid Anne, opening the cover of the popper and letting out delicious whiffs of hot corn. Judy shuddered. "I hate those things," she said. "I couldn't wash dishes, Anne. It is so dreadful for your hands." She went back to her book, and Anne poured the hot corn into a big bowl and salted it. "Have some?" she asked the absorbed reader. Without taking her eyes from her book, Judy stretched out her hand, then all at once she flashed a glance into the rosy face so close to her own. "Anne," she said, almost humbly, "do you know you are more of a Ruskin girl than I am? He says that every girl, every day, should do something really useful about the house--go into the kitchen, and sew, and learn how to fold table-cloths, and things, like that. And you know all of those things--and how to help the poor--and I--I am always trying to do some great thing, and I never really help any one. Not any one, Anne--not a single soul--" "But you are so clever," said little Anne.