"Don't you think I've any capacity for ideas?" the girl continued ruefully.
"Lots of them, no doubt. But the capacity for applying them, for putting them into practice—how much of that have you?"
"How can I tell till I try?"
"What do you mean by trying, Biddy dear?"
"Why you know—you've seen me."
"Do you call that trying?" her brother amusedly demanded.
"Ah Nick!" she said with sensibility. But then with more spirit: "And please what do you call it?"
"Well, this for instance is a good case." And her companion pointed to another bust—a head of a young man in terra-cotta, at which they had just arrived; a modern young man to whom, with his thick neck, his little cap and his wide ring of dense curls, the artist had given the air of some sturdy Florentine of the time of Lorenzo.
Biddy looked at the image a moment. "Ah that's not trying; that's succeeding."
"Not altogether; it's only trying seriously."