Eleanor burst out laughing, and we most of us joined her to such good purpose, that Madame overheard us, and thought it prudent to break up our sitting, though we had only had a short twelve minutes’ rest.
Eleanor not only set the fashion of a more reasonable style of chat in our brief holiday hours, but she was apt to make lessons the subject of discussions which were at first resented by the other girls.
“I can’t think,” she began one day (it was a favourite way with her of opening a discussion)—“I can’t think what makes Mr. Henley always make us put the shadows in in cobalt. Some shadows are light blue certainly, I think, especially on these white roads, but I don’t think they are always; not in Yorkshire, at any rate. However, as far as that goes, he paints his things all in the same colours, whatever they’re meant for; the Bay of Naples or the coast of Northumberland. By the bye, I know that I’ve heard that the shadows on the snow in Canada are really blue—bright blue.”
“You’re blue, deep blue,” said Emma. “How you can talk shop out of lesson hours, Eleanor, I can’t conceive. You began on grammar the other day, by way of enlivening our ten minutes’ rest.”
“I’m very sorry,” said Eleanor: “I’m fond of drawing, you know.”
“Oh, do let her talk, Emma!” cried Peony. “I do so like to hear her. Why are the shadows on the snow blue, Eleanor?”
“I can’t think,” said Eleanor, “unless it has something to do with reflection from the sky.”
Eleanor was not always discreet enough to keep her opinion of Mr. Henley’s style to herself and us. She was a very clever girl, and, like other very young people, her cleverness was apt to be aggressive; scorned compromises, and was not always sufficiently respectful towards the powers that be.
Her taste for drawing was known, and Madame taunted her one day with having a reputation for talent in this line, when her water-colour copies were not so effective as Lucy’s; simply, I believe, with the wish to stimulate her to excel. I am sure Madame much preferred Eleanor to Lucy, as a matter of liking.
“Behold, Mademoiselle!” said she, holding up one of Lucy’s latest copies, just glorified with a wide aureole of white cardboard “mounting”; “what do you think of this?”