"I'll tell you why I was so unhappy, Jeanie; I thought no body loved me, and that I was in the way." "Why, Olive! Olive!" cried Jean in greatest amaze. "How could you think so; who made you?" "I made myself," said Olive. "I was so cross, that I made you all stay away from me, and then I thought it was because no one cared for me, because I was so ugly." "You wasn't pretty then," was Jean's honest remark. "But you are now, really, and so splendid looking some way. You haven't got rosy cheeks like Miss Foster, nor yellow hair like Ernestine, but somehow I love to look at you, and so does Cousin Roger, 'cause sometimes when you are drawing, he just looks right straight at you all the whole time." "Does he?" laughed Olive, and then revealed the utter want of romance in her nature, by never giving the complimentary fact another thought. "I'll tell you something, Jean, if you'll not repeat it." "Oh, no, Olive, never!" "Well, I'm drawing Cousin Roger's head." "You are, and he don't know it?" "No, I take good looks when he don't see, then go and draw awhile; it's good practise, and he has such a strong, clear face, and splendidly shaped head, that I have to work hard to make my picture good, and I find it is helping me a great deal," said Olive, with never a thought of doing a thing that might be termed romantic. "How nice, and may I see it?" "Yes, when it is done." "And may _I_ see it?" inquired a new voice, that made them both start and turn, to see Roger Congreve coming down the gallery. "Did you hear?" asked Olive, looking a little vexed; and Jean opened her mouth to say something, then shut it in a hurry. "No, I didn't except the last two sentences; but from the way you both look, I think it must be something that I ought to hear," answered the gentleman, sitting down on Jean's divan with a laugh. "Tell him," whispered Jean, and as Olive looked up, and saw his head with gleams of sunshine falling across it, she realized the advantage of having it to look at steadily, and how grand his forehead was. "Yes, I'd just as soon tell you as not," she said frankly. "I've been taking a sketch of your head." "Have you indeed," he exclaimed, with a sudden light in his face that Olive could not understand, if indeed, she thought anything about it. "Yes, it makes a splendid study, but I haven't made much progress, because I've had so few chances." "Why did you do it on the sly?" he asked, hoping to detect a little confusion in her answer, such as might indicate a little deeper interest than the mere study; but not a bit of it; she answered readily enough: "I thought you might consider it a bore to sit still, doing nothing, just for the sake of being copied, so I never said anything about it, but studied by piece-meal." "On the contrary, believe me, nothing would be greater bliss than to sit still doing nothing, by the hour, for the sake of being copied--by you," said Roger with an unmistakable accent.