“Not all at once, of course; but if you always do your very best, it will surprise you how fast you will get on. You often hear the saying that if a thing is worth doing at all, it is worth doing well. Try always to keep that in mind, and you will soon see how fast you learn to work cleverly, both with your hands and with your head.”
“Well, I’ll try,” answered Squib with a sigh; “but it’s very hard not to be in a hurry sometimes.”
Herr Adler came presently to his collection of carved animals for the little sisters and friends at home. Squib displayed them with some pride, and his friend spoke very kindly about them; for until Seppi had taught him a little, Squib had had no idea of carving. But he showed Squib, as Seppi never did, how odd many of his animals were, with impossible horns and tails, wrong heads on wrong bodies, and legs sometimes jointed the wrong way—all sorts of blunders, partly careless, partly the result of lacking skill, but defects which Squib had taken as a matter of course before.
“They are such little things, and only to amuse the children,” said the little boy, “you see it doesn’t much matter whether they are right or wrong. They will never care.”
“That may be very true; but that’s not the way to look at it,” answered Herr Adler smiling. “Are you going to be always content to carve in this anyhow fashion? and if not, how are you going to improve, if you are quite satisfied with a creature which has the head of a horse, and the body of a goat, and the tail of a dog?”
Squib burst out laughing as Herr Adler held up the nondescript animal in question, turning it round and round in his hand as he spoke.
“It is rather a queer one, isn’t it? But Seppi never told me they were wrong; and Lisa calls them all wunderschön. I never troubled to think whether they were right or wrong; but I will now.”
“Do, my little friend, and you will find your work a hundred times more interesting. See how Seppi enjoys drawing his goats, now that he is really trying to make them like life, not just so many four-legged creatures that might be almost anything.”
“That’s quite true,” answered Squib; “it’s ever so much more interesting. I’ll try that with my carving and other things; but I wish everything didn’t take so long in the learning.”
And then they went down to luncheon, and Herr Adler was introduced by Squib with great pride to his mother and her friends.