Roger sighed.
“I’m glad there’s one in the family,” said he.
“Why not two? I say, will your tutor mind your having painting-lessons of me?”
“Mind? Not he. I shouldn’t be surprised if he wants to have some too.”
Rosalind laughed.
“That would be too terrible,” said she. “But I must go now. Will you lend me this picture for a little? I’d like to look at it again.”
Roger laughed.
“Oh yes, if you’ll promise not to fall in love with him for good.”
When Roger presented himself at the appointed hour in his cousin’s studio, he found that young lady very much in earnest and not at all disposed to regard her new functions as a jest. Roger, who had come expecting to be amused, found himself ignominiously set down at a table beside the amenable Tom (who had been coerced into joining the class) and directed to copy a very elementary representation of a gable of a cottage which the instructress had set up on the easel. Six times was he compelled to tackle this simple object before his copy was pronounced passable; and until that Rosalind sternly discouraged all conversation or inattention.
“Really, Roger,” said she, when at last he meekly submitted his final copy, “for a boy of your age you are an uncommonly rough hand. Tom is a much more promising pupil than you.”