Elise was delighting in her steady work, the first she had ever been allowed to do. She lacked Judy's sense of color but on the other hand was very clever at sketching and getting a likeness, and had inherited her father's inimitable powers of caricature.
"Oh," sighed Judy, "if I could only get the people in my memory sketches to stand on their legs and seem to move as yours do, Elise, how happy I should be!"
"And I," said Elise, "would give anything if I could see and put on canvas the lovely colors that you can. I can't see anything but drab, somehow. It must be a somberness of disposition that affects my eyesight."
"But, Elise," broke in Molly, "you are not somber at all. You are full of jokes and bon mots."
"Oh, that is just my way here with all of you lovely, good, happy people. I am usually very dull and sober. Mamma says I can be the stupidest company in all the world, and I am sure she is right."
Elise had indeed blossomed in the congenial atmosphere in which she found herself for the first time in her life. Mr. Kinsella watched her eagerly, seeing many things about her to remind him of his old friend George O'Brien; and when the girl occasionally let drop some of the worldly cynicism that she had perforce learned from her mother, the sad look in his eyes would make her quickly repent her bitterness, and her endeavors to bring back his rarely sweet smile were almost pathetic in their eagerness. Mrs. Brown understood the girl thoroughly and did everything in her power to make her feel that she was one of the little coterie and a valued member; but Elise found it difficult to look upon herself as anything but an outsider. She was sensitively afraid of being in the way where Molly's and Judy's intimacy was concerned, and the girls often had to force her to join them on a lark unless Mrs. Brown was one of the party.
Pierce was "making good," as he expressed it, at the school. He had gone through several years of hard drawing at the League in New York, so decided that he could give his time to the painting that was to be his life's work. His uncle was delighted with his progress, and felt that his own youth was not lost at all but reincarnated in the glowing genius of his beloved nephew.
Molly was studying at the Sorbonne, where her Cousin Philippe d'Ochtè had duly installed her. It did not seem like studying, but more like going to the theater for several hours a day. The lecturers were so charming, so vivacious; their delivery was so dramatic, their gestures so animated. She drank in every word and found herself understanding French as she had never dreamed that she could.
She wrote on her stories when she was not attending the lectures. The Latin Quarter had given her several good plots and she was eager to work them out before Professor Green should put in his appearance, as she was anxious to let him see she had accomplished something during her Paris winter. That poor young man was still teaching the young idea how to shoot at Wellington and saw no hope of his release before March.
Kent Brown wrote cheerful letters from Kentucky. He was very busy in his chosen field of architecture and was learning French in a night class to fit himself for the Beaux Arts when he would finally be able to get to Paris. Aunt Clay was fighting the Trust vindictively as only she could fight and was dying hard, but Kent predicted that the end was near; and as soon as the suit was settled, he intended to take the first steamer abroad.