"No, ma'am."
"You draw well; you ought to have a chance. You'll make an artist some day. Your cow is not quite right. If you'll bring the picture to me after school I'll show you some things about it. I think you'd better put it away now till you get your geography lesson."
Henrietta, full of wonder at finding her art no longer regarded as a sin, put the slate into the desk, and cheerfully resumed the study of the boundaries and chief products of North Carolina, while Miss Reade returned to the hearing of the third-reader class.
"I say, Henrietta, she's j-u-s-t s-p-l-e-n-d-i-d!" whispered Maria Thomas. And Rob Riley thought Miss Reade was almost as fine as Henrietta herself.
"You see," said Miss Reade to Henrietta after school, "that the hind legs of your cow look longer than the fore legs."
"There's something wrong." said the girl, "but that isn't it. I've measured, and the cow's just as high before as behind, though she doesn't look so."
"Yes, but you've put her head a little toward you. The hind legs ought to seem shorter at a little distance off. Now try it. Make her not so high from the ground behind," and Miss Reade proceeded to explain one or two principles of perspective. When Henrietta had experimented on her cow and saw the result, she was delighted.
"I don't know much about drawing," said Miss Reade, "but I've a set of drawing books and some drawing cards. Now, if you'll let drawing alone till you get your lessons each day, I'll lend you my drawing books and give you all the help I can."
When the old man Newton heard that the "new school ma'am" was permitting Henrietta to draw "fool picters on her slate," he was sure that it never would work. He believed in breaking a child's will, for his part, "though the one that broke Henriettar's will would hev to git up purty airly in the mornin' now, certain," he added with a grim smile. But when the old man found Henrietta unexpectedly industrious, toiling over her studies at night, he was surprised beyond measure; and when he understood the compact by which studies were to come first and drawing afterward, he winked his eye knowingly at his wife.
"Who'd a thought that little red-headed school ma'am would a ben so cute? She knows the very bait for Henriettar now. That woman would do to trade hosses."