And both were young

by Madeleine L'Engle

Madame Perceval started to laugh but then she looked at Flip and Paul and their eager excited faces, and she said slowly, "It would be rather a tall order teaching Flip just on week-ends. She needs lots of practice."

"I could slip out in the morning before Call Over," Flip cried. "If I make my bed before breakfast and hurry breakfast I'd have almost an hour and nobody'd see me then."

"And think how surprised that Fräulein Hauser would be," Paul cried.

"And the girls would be so surprised," Flip shouted. "Erna and Jackie and all of them. Oh, Madame, do you think I could learn? I'd work terribly hard. I'd practice and practice."

"If you keep on improving the way you've improved this afternoon," Madame Perceval told her, "I'm sure you could."

"Come on, Aunt Colette," Paul cajoled.

Madame Perceval looked at them for a moment longer. Then she smiled and said, "Why not?"

4

Flip finished her still life of a plaster head of Diana, a wine bottle, a loaf of bread, and a wine glass, early during the next art class.

"That's good, Flip," Madame Perceval said. "Really very good, though your perspective is wobbly—everything's going up hill at quite an alarming angle and poor Diana looks as though she were about to fall on her ear. But the color and texture is excellent. That's really bread, and the transparency of your glass is a great improvement over your last still life. That's good work, Flip."