"Oh, how beautiful!" he exclaimed. "I'm so glad, Emma, that you thought of it; it is splendid to draw! I'll begin directly; not exactly here, but a little farther off." And Fani stepped slowly back till he had reached the right point of view. There he sat down on the ground, and Emma, placing herself at his side, drew out from her satchel a perfect wealth of paper and pencils.
"There's paper enough there to make a great many sketches," said the boy, as he looked with longing eyes at all this fine material.
"I will give you a lot of it to take home," said Emma. "I thought I would bring a good deal, because you might have to try several times before you got a good picture. Now pick out a pencil, Fani."
It seemed to Fani a wonderful mine of wealth; all this fresh paper, and such an assortment of pencils to choose from. He selected two pencils, and then, spreading a sheet of white paper before him, he began his sketch. Emma watched every stroke with silent intentness. But, as the picture grew under the boy's fingers, she could not control her excitement.
"Oh! oh! Now it looks exactly like the real oak! How nicely you make the branches and all the dear little twigs! Oh! it is the very best thing you ever did, Fani! How pleased the teacher will be! I'm sure none of the others will do anything half so good! How can you do it, Fani? I never could in the world."
"I only just copy what I see," said Fani, whose eyes constantly moved back and forth between the tree and his paper, while his cheeks glowed and his eyes sparkled with excitement. "How lovely those twigs are! and then the leaves! I don't think any leaf is as handsome as an oak-leaf, and just look up there! see how perfectly round the shape of the tree stands out against the sky, as if it had been marked by a pair of compasses. Oh, I wish I could sit all day long drawing this tree; there isn't anything more beautiful in the whole world!"
"I know something!" cried Emma, suddenly; "you must be an artist, Fani. That's the way a painter begins, I'm sure; no one else would ever think of saying that he could sit all day long drawing one tree."
"It's all very well to say that I must be an artist," said Fani, sighing; "but next spring, when I leave school, I shall have to go into the factory and just work hard from morning till night; I couldn't learn to paint then, if I wanted to ever so much, could I?"
"But you do want to ever so much; don't you, Fani? Think how glorious it would be! Wouldn't you do anything in the world for the sake of being a painter?"
"Of course I would, but what can I do? How could I possibly manage it?"