Raymond was seven. Surely at this age, if ever, a child should show himself “_un enfant déjà raisonnable_.” The new governess had said so; she had added, in gentle despair, that without doubt it was different with the children of artists and the criminal classes. She was a puzzle-headed young creature from the devastated regions, and not yet hardened to life’s surprises. Her career among us had early been darkened by the discovery that the children of American artists have no real feeling for the relative pronoun, in French. And what, she passionately demanded of the elder Brooke girl, what would our noble French literature be, without its relative pronouns? She was in earnest, and looked very pretty and bright-eyed as she asked it. Raymond, poor Nordic, was fascinated by that slender dark streak above her upper lip. It seemed very firm and permanent, yet fragile and downy, too; he wondered whether, if you touched it, it would vanish. But Mademoiselle chose that moment to inquire of him, the youngest infant of the Brooke trio, whether he had the very smallest idea what a relative pronoun was, or even an ordinary pronoun, for example! Raymond was either unable or unwilling to throw light on the situation, and had fled toward the studio to escape his responsibilities. From Scylla to Charybdis, from French literature to American art! He was not thinking of his pronouns, either; he was thinking of that downy shadow. But this, I admit, scarcely excuses his grotesque conduct. His father was not in the studio; the clay lady reigned supreme; a fine challenging old lady she was, drawing her breath with that superb kindliness the clay allows. The portrait was still, according to its creator, in the chrysalis stage. Later, it would be transformed into white plaster, and later yet, if luck held, it would issue, gleaming and triumphant, in spotless Carrara. The sculptor was by no means dissatisfied with that clay portrait; the world called it a speaking likeness. He himself found it a trace too masculine, perhaps; but that was inevitable, with a type so full of high character. He was glad it was so, because he knew well enough that the marble would only too easily soften and spiritualize his interpretation of the old lady of Highcourt, with her white hair nobly tossed up from her candid brow. She was a very beautiful old lady, truly; no one denied that; straight as an arrow and graceful as a palm, for all her seventy years; not fat, not lean; greatly given to charming clothes, too, and not particularly scandalized by our shocking modern custom of short skirts for all, especially grandmothers. You see her own feet were very shapely. And her profile was that of Cato’s daughter, softened by centuries. All the little wrinkles around her eyes were kind and smiling ones. No wonder those college girls had voted that the old lady of Highcourt should be immortalized in fair Carrara, at a fair price, and shrined in a niche in their stately new Library, her gift.