The Project Gutenberg eBook, Miss Pat at School, by Pemberton Ginther

Title: Miss Pat at School

Author: Pemberton Ginther

Release Date: October 16, 2007 [eBook #22995]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MISS PAT AT SCHOOL***

PATRICIA TOILED ALL AFTERNOON WITH THE ARDOR OF IGNORANCE AND HOPE.

MISS PAT AT SCHOOL

BY

PEMBERTON GINTHER

FRONTISPIECE BY THE AUTHOR

PHILADELPHIA
THE JOHN C. WINSTON COMPANY
PUBLISHERS

Copyright, 1915, by
THE JOHN C. WINSTON COMPANY.

TO NANCY

CONTENTS

Miss Pat at School

CHAPTER I

THE TWO NEW STUDENTS

"Isn't it jolly—to be here in a real Academy of Fine Arts, just like all the famous artists when they were young and unknown? Doesn't it make you feel all excited and quivery, Norn?" asked Patricia, as she fitted her key into the narrow gray locker with an air of huge enjoyment. "I don't see how you can look so cool. You are as calm and refrigerated as a piece of the North Pole."

Elinor smiled and her shining eyes traveled down the wide dim corridor with its rows of battered gray lockers, past the confusion of chairs and easels that clustered around the big screen of the composition room, straight into the farthest nook of the great bare work rooms beyond, where an array of heroic-sized white casts loomed conspicuous in the cold north light above the clutter of easels, stools and drawing-boards that encompassed the silent, intent workers.

"I'm not half so calm as I look, Miss Pat," she said, seriously. "I'm more excited than I ever was in my life. It's too deep to come to the surface, I guess. I haven't any words for it."

Patricia nodded approval.

"That's your 'sensitive, artistic temperament,' as Mrs. Hand calls it. It must be awfully trying, though, not to be able to babble when you're pleased. It's such a relief to get it out of your system. I'd simply burst if I tried to keep quiet when I felt excited."

Elinor smiled absently, and then burst out fervently, "Isn't it all gloriously workmanlike—the bare walls and smudged doors and the painty smell, too? It's so serious. Outside, the people regard a picture as a mere luxury, but in here, here," she said, exultantly, "it is absolutely the necessary thing in life."

Patricia shut her door with a snap and turned to her sister with a glowing face, sweeping her stray tendrils back with an eager gesture.

"I know it!" she cried. "It makes even me feel as though I could turn off masterpieces