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 _instanter_. Merely to look at those lumps of clay in the modeling room made me simply _ache_ to get my hands into them. I was enchanted the moment I came in here with you this morning, never dreaming that I should be so lucky as to be one of the illustrious band myself. You're a perfect duck, Norn, to let me tag along after you here."
"You might as well do that as anything else," said Elinor, rather absently. "The best of it is that we shall be together. It will be such fun to see how we each get along."
"'We!'" echoed Patricia. "You mean how _you_ get along. I shan't count at all. I may have to give up when I actually get at it." Then with a swift change of spirit she added: "All the same, if I couldn't do better than some of those smudgy celebrities in the modeling room were doing, I'd feel pretty sorry for myself. Such forlorn, lop-sided caricatures of human beings I never saw. I don't see how they can do them."
Elinor's soft laugh rippled out. "It's clear that you haven't tried to do it, or you'd see how easy it is to make caricatures instead of portraits," she said. "I didn't think they were so very bad."
"I'd be ashamed to have anyone see them if I'd done them," declared Patricia, unconvinced. "They seemed quite cocky over them, poor idiots. I hope some of them do better than that, or I shan't learn much."
"It would be wonderful if you did make a success of it," said Elinor, beginning to put her newly acquired implements into her locker. "How surprised Bruce will be that you are studying here, too."
"Don't tell him, for the world!" cried Patricia, her brow wrinkling at the thought of that noted artist's surprise. "I shouldn't have dared to take the course if he was ever to see anything I did! I'm only going into it for fun, and I shouldn't have dreamed of doing it if it hadn't been the cheapest course in the whole school. You know I shouldn't have, Elinor dear, so please don't tell."
Elinor gave her a reassuring squeeze. "Don't be afraid, Miss Pat. I won't give away your dark secrets to anyone till you want me to. You'll tell David, won't you?"