"Well, children, have you been good at school?" inquired their mother,
as Lina and Marie ran gleefully up the path.
"Oh, so good!" promptly answered Marie, clapping her fat little hands as
if to applaud her own virtue. "We danced in a ring till Dolly was so
giddy I had to sit down."
"Poor Dolly!" said Mrs. Wolf.
"Oh! she'll be better soon," said Marie cheerfully. "She's lying back
because she's faint--at least, she says so; but I do believe the real
reason is she likes it better than being at the bottom of the bag."
"Very likely she does," said Mrs. Wolf, smiling at Marie's speech, for
the little four-year-old girl quite believed her doll felt things as she
did. Then turning to Lina, "And what have you done, my darling?"
Lina was seven years old, and could read and write nicely, and was in a
higher form in the school than Marie, whose school-work was, very
properly, mostly play.
"We did a new sort of lesson to-day, mother," said Lina. "See!" and she
handed a book to her mother, who stooped down to be on a level with the
little scholar.
"Open it at page forty-six, please, mother."
"Yes; here it is, but it is only a picture of a rabbit," said Mrs. Wolf.
"That is right," said Lina: "we all looked at that picture, and then we
had to shut the book and write what we could about The Rabbit. And the
little girl next me put, 'The rabbit moves his nose when he eats;' and
that was all she wrote. We did so laugh when she had to read it out."
"A very short essay, certainly," said Mrs. Wolf, laughing also; "still,
it is strictly true, and that is something. But what did my little Lina
write?"
"I'll show you, mother," said Lina; and, with a deep blush on her face,
she drew her slate carefully out of her bag. "The mistress was pleased
with it, and told me I might show it to you."
Lina's slate had on it a really spirited little sketch of two rabbits,
and Mrs. Wolf was both surprised and delighted.
"Did you do this, Lina?" she asked, as she drew the little artist to
her.
"I couldn't think of anything to write," said Lina shyly; "I never can;
so I drew the rabbits instead."
"My darling," said her mother earnestly, "if you work hard you might one
day be a great artist--I feel sure of it."
Mrs. Wolf's words came true in after years. Lina is now a well-known
painter, and honors not a few have fallen to her share.
But that day in the garden, when mother first prophesied that she would
be an artist, is still the day that Lina loves most to recall. "It was
mother's praise that made an artist of me," she always declares.
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