and his eyes sparkled with excitement. "How lovely those twigs are! and
then the leaves! I don't think any leaf is as handsome as an oak-leaf,
and just look up there! see how perfectly round the shape of the tree
stands out against the sky, as if it had been marked by a pair of
compasses. Oh, I wish I could sit all day long drawing this tree; there
isn't anything more beautiful in the whole world!"

"I know something!" cried Emma, suddenly; "you must be an artist, Fani.
That's the way a painter begins, I'm sure; no one else would ever think
of saying that he could sit all day long drawing one tree."

"It's all very well to say that I must be an artist," said Fani,
sighing; "but next spring, when I leave school, I shall have to go into
the factory and just work hard from morning till night; I couldn't
learn to paint then, if I wanted to ever so much, could I?"

"But you do want to ever so much; don't you, Fani? Think how glorious it
would be! Wouldn't you do anything in the world for the sake of being a
painter?"

"Of course I would, but what can I do? How could I possibly manage it?"

"You just wait; I'll think and think till I can invent some way. Only
imagine how fine it will be when you are a famous painter and have
nothing to do but to paint and draw all the time. Won't that be just the
very best thing you can think of, Fani?"

Emma's enthusiasm was infectious. The pencil dropped from the boy's
hand, and he gazed up into the sky as if already looking upon the future
canvases which he should cover with pictures when he was a great