The sun came warmly in at the great west window of the picture gallery, and showed Olive sitting before a tall frame, and working busily at the sketch that lay in her lap. Very near to her lay Jean, on a luxurious little divan, with an open book in her hands, from which she read a little now and then, and watching her sister in the meantime. It was very still, for when Olive was at work she was always too absorbed to think of aught else, and objected to being talked to, so the deep silence lay unbroken, and Jean satisfied herself with being allowed to watch to her heart's content. At last Olive raised her head with a sigh, partly of fatigue, and partly of blissful content, and after taking a professional squint at her subject and her copy, passed it over to Jean with the remark: "There, how do you like that, Jean? Does his nose look right?" "Just beautiful!" cried Jean with enthusiasm. "How splendidly you do it, Olive. He looks as if he was going to speak. It must be so nice to be an artist; you'll be a great one, some day, won't you?" "I want to be," answered Olive, who had lately learned that nothing so threw Jean into raptures, as to be appealed to, and confided in. "After I learn to draw heads just as nicely as possible, I am going to sketch yours and Ernestine's for mama." "Are you really?" exclaimed Jean in delight, "and like that one?" "Yes, like this," said Olive, looking at her sketch, which was a copy of a magnificent head of Demosthenes, cast in bas-relief against black velvet. "Don't you think she will like it?" "Oh, she'll just be too happy!" cried Jean, slipping from her lounge, and limping over to Olive with her cane. "I want to talk a little while now, will you, Olive?" The young artist cast a hasty regretful look at her drawing, and was on the point of putting off the little talk, for her fingers fairly trembled to go on with her work, and catch with her pencil the peculiar life-like expression about the mouth of the great orator; but the temptation was thrust aside, and the next moment, Jean was sitting in her lap, with the contented air of one who expects no rebuffs or unreturned caresses. "I've been watching you so long," she began, touching with loving fingers, the long, heavy braid of beautiful hair, that had fallen over Olive's shoulder, "and I just wanted to tell you how different you look from the way you used to, you know." "Yes," answered Olive, who had grown used to these loving bursts of admiration from the observing little girl. "I used to think," continued Jean, "that you was the most unhappy girl I ever saw, and it made me feel so sorry, 'cause I thought it must be somebody's fault, and then I wanted to kiss you, or something, but you always looked so, I didn't know whether you'd like it or not, and so I never did." "But I would have been glad," said Olive, who could remember very well the many times she had frozen the little girl's loving advances.