"They never let Ernestine stay home! Indeed not, and there's the greatest commotion raised if she speaks of such a thing. She's pretty and graceful, and loves to dress up like a doll, while I'm ugly, and awkward, and always do things wrong, and disgrace them, I suppose. I don't see what I'm crying for, I'm sure. I can be happy without them as well as they without me!" and Olive raised her head defiantly, and flung the tears from her lashes, for having cried; the burden seemed lighter, and the little hurt and loneliness less hard. "I've plenty to think of besides them, and I might as well go to work." So out of the trunk came a box, and Olive's tears were as quickly gone as they had come. This box held a collection of sketches, many of them originals, some of them copies, but all bearing marks of a strong talent, rude and somewhat hasty as yet, but capable of much, when the young artist should have studied, and brought a few happy ideas to color the faces and scenes that grew from under her fingers. Now they clearly betrayed the unhappy spirit that prompted them, for there was not one glad sunshiny picture among them; instead, there were several faces of women, in various attitudes of defiance or despair, with a stern relentless sorrow darkening their eyes, and hardening their lips; then there was an old boat over-turned in the shadow of a half-broken tree, and various sketches of home scenery from the different windows of the house. Olive had selected one, somewhat larger than the rest, and had gone to work rapidly, pressing her lips tightly in the earnestness of her work and thoughts, and the room was perfectly silent for a long time. Presently she stopped abruptly, and balancing her pencil on her finger, looked out of the window with a troubled longing in her eyes. "I wonder if I ever can," she murmured slowly. "How hard it is to be patient, and wait, it's three months yet until I am sixteen, and they never will let me I know, because it's too dangerous for a girl. I'm sorry I am one anyhow; it makes everything go wrong. Now, there's my money, I'm glad I've got it to give to papa. Dear papa, I don't believe he or mama cares because I'm so ugly; I'll give it to him to-night, and then while I'm waiting, I'll work and earn some more, so as to have enough;" and, after ending this slightly enigmatical speech with an abrupt nod, Olive looked a little brighter and fell to work so rapidly, that she shaded a dimple until it looked like a bullet-hole in the cheek of her fair subject.