Their days were spent, not in
drudgery, and lecturing, and primness, but in the study and reproduction
of the beauty lying round them. Oh, if God should have intended her to
be one of these!
When the maids came to dust the school-room they found Hetty hard at
work upon a new wreath of ivy which she had hastily snatched from the
garden wall and hung against the curtain, and they thought she was
doing some penance at Miss Davis's bidding. By eight o'clock the
drawings were hid away, the flowers and wreaths disposed of in the jars,
and Hetty was sitting at the table with a book in her hand. No one need
know, she thought, of how she spent those early hours when everybody
else was in bed. And so day after day she worked on steadily with her
pencil, and there was a strange and unutterable hope in her heart, and a
new light of happiness in her eyes.
After some time she became more daring and attempted to bring colour
into her designs. Using her school-room box of paints, the paints
intended only for the drawing of maps, she placed washes of colour on
her leaves and along her stems, making the whole composition more
effective and complete.
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