"Miss Griffin!" came the dreary voice of the monitor, as with a fat and dimpled finger she pointed solemnly to the sign on the door, "No TALKING."

Griffin grinned amiably at the reproving finger. "Only the necessary instructions to a novice, Green dear," she protested smoothly. "I'm saving you the trouble of showing her how. You really ought to thank me instead of holding me up to scorn."

Miss Green, with a kindly glance at Patricia, puckered up her lips in the circle that only fat, soft-fleshed people can accomplish and laid the impartial finger on them as a sign that no more words were to be wasted, and the class, temporarily attentive to the newcomers, became absorbed again.

A heavy-shouldered dark man, whose workmanlike appearance was heightened by the torn and spotted linen apron he wore, came quietly over to Patricia, and, taking the wire from Miss Griffin's thin, nervous hands, silently and swiftly finished the work she had begun, while she, with a nod of acquiescence, went to her own stand and began to thump lumps of clay into shape about her own iron head-piece.

Patricia accepted the help as silently as it was offered, and when he brought her clay and, still mute, showed her how to block the rough clay into a semblance of a human head, she smiled at him with ready gratitude, not daring more for fear of the omnipotent Miss Green.

"How do you like it now?" asked Griffin, as the gong released them for the rest, and they slipped out in the corridor to look for Elinor.

"Perfectly fine and dandy!" cried Patricia, glowing. "My word, but that Miss Green is severe! I never heard such silence as in that room. Why, an ordinary schoolroom is a perfect Babel compared to it."

"You'll get used to old Bottle Green, all right," said Griffin reassuringly. "Her bark is a whole lot worse than her bite. She's a trump at heart, though she is awful fool on the outside."

Elinor was waiting for them, and Patricia could see that she was in a state of great agitation. She hurried to her, while her companion dropped behind to exchange notes with one of the men from the composition room.

"What is it, Norn? Didn't you get along all right?" she asked breathlessly.

Elinor dropped on a stool and raised her face to her sister, and Patricia was surprised to see that her eyes were shining with joy instead of tears.

"Oh, Miss Pat!" she cried in an ecstasy. "I've made good, and I can write to Bruce and tell him!"

"What, already?" exclaimed Patricia rapturously. "You duck! Tell me all about it instantly."

She swept Elinor off the stool, away from the crowded dressing room, and at last found a deserted corner behind a big cast.

"Now," she demanded, "tell me all about it, or I'll simply die of ingrowing curiosity."

Elinor rippled and dimpled in a surprisingly sparkling fashion as she recounted her experience in the portrait room, and Patricia, while she listened, marveled at the change in her placid sister.

"And so," concluded Elinor, "when I had just gotten ready to come out to see you, some more of them came over and looked at it. And one of them said, 'Dorset's right. It's a pace-maker all correct,' and then they brought some other men, and I left."

Patricia, greatly excited, patted her hard on the shoulder. "I told you you'd be a winner," she crowed. "I guess Bruce knew what he was talking about."

Elinor's face clouded. "But I have only started the outline," she confessed. "And I'm awfully weak on putting in the tones. I'm afraid I'll make a fizzle of it."

"See here," said Patricia, facing her severely. "I'm tired of your deceptive timidity. Just let someone else say you can't do it, and you'd feel mighty mad about it, but you're willing to scare me out of my feeble senses by croaking."

Elinor jumped up laughing, and hugged her. "I'll be as conceited as you like, if you'll stop scolding," she promised, gayly. "It doesn't look well to be too much under the thumb of a younger sister, even if she is a promising sculptor. By the way, how are you getting on? I hear that Miss Griffin is a wonderful worker. Did you see anything of her work?"

Patricia gave her a brief outline of the class and its chief characters, as far as she had observed, dwelling on Miss Green with great satisfaction.

"I know she's going to be a treat," she declared. "I hope she keeps whole for a while at least, until I get better acquainted."

"And do you know," she went on, "that the model is a Russian refugee, and he tried to kill himself because he was so homesick. He's just out of the hospital, and he has a great red scar across his breast. Isn't it exciting to be among such different sort of people? We've always been so sort of tabbified."

"We've had enough ups and downs, I am sure," said Elinor vaguely. It was evident that her mind was not on either their varied past nor even the fascinating present, but was busy with a future of progress and achievement.

"Wake up, old lady," cried Patricia. "There's the gong, and we must fly."

Patricia toiled all that afternoon with the ardor of ignorance and hope. The others looked at her with occasional interest, but otherwise paid little attention to her. In the rests she went out to visit Elinor, or Elinor came in to watch her progress. Her head fairly swam with the delightful novelty of this new and quick-flowing life. When the last gong rang she heard it with regret.

"It's better than I ever dreamed," she said to the amiable Griffin as she was showing her how to put the wet cloths about her work. "It's not half so hard as I thought it would be, either."

"Wait till Saturday, when old Jonesy lights on you," warned her new friend. "You won't find life so lightsome when his eagle eye discovers you."

"Pooh, I shan't mind how criss-cross he is," declared Patricia valiantly. "I'm only the rankest greenhorn, anyway. He can't expect me to be a Rodin."

She washed her tools in the grimy tanks of the clay room, more in love with it every minute, and when she joined Elinor at their lockers, she was fairly bursting with enthusiasm.

"It's simply heavenly, and I don't know how we got along without it!" she cried, rapturously. "It makes me wild to think of the months we've wasted this fall."

Elinor laughed her low ripple. "We didn't find Francis Edward David till the middle of December, and it's now the third week in January. I don't think we've let much grass grow under our feet."

"I wish this were the night for night life," said Patricia fervently. "I'd stay and watch you begin——"

"No, you wouldn't," said Elinor, promptly. "They don't allow other people in the life-class rooms. You'd have to go home and see that Judith was all right. We can't leave her too much to her own devices, even if she is the best little thing in the world."

"Bless her heart!" cried Patricia, with a laugh. "I'd clean forgot that I had any relatives in the world. It's a good thing I have you to keep me straight, Norn. Mercy, what a jam! I don't believe we'll ever get a place at the wash-stands."

The dressing room was crowded to its limit, paint brushes were being washed and stained hands scrubbed at the line of faucets that occupied two sides of the room; girls were hurrying into their street clothes, while others, coming in for the night life, were getting into aprons and paint dresses; some few who were staying for the night life were curled up on the wide couches, exchanging comments with their friends among the hurrying crowd while they refreshed themselves with crackers or cakes.

Patricia, with her cheeks glowing and twin lights dancing in her big eyes, loitered so over her dressing that they were among the last to leave.

"I hate to go, don't you?" she said, as they came out into the corridor, which was dimmer than ever in the sparsely lit twilight. "I love— Oh, how you made me jump!" she cried, starting back as a figure stepped from the alcove by the street entrance.

The