careless exterior at their unuttered blame, wearing her reputation for hardness like an inversion of the magic suit of mail, seeming stout armor, and yet letting every arrow through. Still, it served its purpose, since no one dared say, "See! that struck home!" CHAPTER XIII After several years' supremacy as "the greatest dancer on the earth," that brilliant career was suddenly abandoned. It was evident that a mistake had been made. Val's true destiny was to be Queen of Song. It was difficult to illustrate the fact in your unmusical grandmother's house, but you could do a good deal in that direction at the New Plymouth Seminary for Young Ladies. You could roar down several hundred girls in the morning hymn, and you could even have occasional surreptitious performances in the gymnasium, or at home in the kitchen, where whole cycles of impromptu operas were given in a season. For the rest, you sang to yourself in lonely places and exulted. Sometimes you trembled, shaken to the verge of tears by the beauty and pathos of your own voice. There had been a brief interval when the sum of achievements in the drawing-class seemed, in Val's mind, to point to her becoming a second Rosa Bonheur. It was certain that her copy of Landseer's "Rabbits" was a work of extreme merit. Even her grandmother, who usually said "Hum!" when she looked at Val's original designs for wall-paper or carpet, remarked on beholding the rabbits: "I'll have them framed." If that were not distinction, where shall it be found? But it was grasping to set more than one snare for greatness--let Emmie be Rosa Bonheur, Val would be the great singer of her time. "Let me have music lessons," she prayed. "I'll practise at school and at Julia's." "It is out of the question," said her grandmother. Val knew "out of the question" meant it was a question of being out of pocket. "I'll give up drawing." "Drawing is much less expensive; and even so, you and Emmie must give it up after this term." "Then, what on earth are we going to learn besides common lessons?" "I'll teach you botany and gardening," said her father. "I don't care about botany," said Val, hotly, "and"--unmasking the hypocrisy of years--"and as for gardening, there isn't _any_thing I hate so much." "_What?_" Her father couldn't believe his ears. "Yes. I'm sorry. It's very kind of you to offer so often to teach me; but I really quite hate flowers." Her father looked at her with a severity she had seldom seen in his face. "Then, in that case"--he spoke as though originating a punishment fit for a new unnatural crime--"in that case you should learn cooking."