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.