Mother Carey's Chickens
herself into a frenzy of grief and disappointment."
"You'd better give her lessons in self-control," Mr. Lord answered. "They are cheaper than instruction in drawing, and much more practical."
So Olive lived and struggled and grew; and luckily her talent was such a passion that no circumstances could crush or extinguish it. She worked, discovering laws and making rules for herself, since she had no helpers. When she could not make a rabbit or a bird look "real" on paper, she searched in her father's books for pictures of its bones. "If I could only know what it is like inside, Cyril," she said, "perhaps its outside would n't look so flat! O! Cyril, there must be some better way of doing; I just draw the outline of an animal and then I put hairs or feathers on it. They have no bodies. They could n't run nor move; they're just pasteboard."
"Why don't you do flowers and houses, Olive?" inquired Cyril solicitously. "And people paint fruit, and dead fish on platters, and pitchers of lemonade with ice in,—why don't you try things like those?"
"I suppose they're easier," Olive returned with a sigh, "but who could bear to do them when there are living, breathing, moving things;
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