She early displayed a remarkable taste for drawing.  As soon as this was discovered, her foster parents took care that she should have abundant opportunity for cultivating it.  A private master was secured, who gave her daily lessons, and boasted everywhere of his charming little pupil, whose progress, as he assured her friends, exceeded anything he had ever before known.

Nothing could exceed the cooper’s gratification when, on his birthday, Ida presented him with a beautifully-drawn sketch of his wife’s placid and benevolent face.

“When did you do it, Ida?” he asked, after earnest expressions of admiration.

“I did it in odd minutes,” she said; “in the evening.”

“But how could you do it without any one of us knowing what you were about?”

“I had a picture before me, and you thought I was copying it, but whenever I could do it without being noticed, I looked up at mother as she sat at her sewing, and so, after awhile, I made this picture.”

“And a fine one it is,” said Timothy, admiringly.

Mrs. Crump insisted that Ida had flattered her, but this the child would not admit.  “I couldn’t make it look as good as you, mother,” she said.  “I tried to, but somehow I couldn’t succeed as well as I wanted to.”

“You wouldn’t have that difficulty with Aunt Rachel,” said Jack, roguishly.

Ida, with difficulty, suppressed a laugh.

“I see,” said Aunt Rachel, with severe resignation, “that you’ve taken to ridiculing your poor aunt again.  But it’s what I expect.  I don’t never expect any consideration in this house.  I was born to be a martyr, and I expect I shall fulfil my destiny.  If my own relations laugh at me, of course I can’t expect anything better from other folks.  But I sha’n’t be long in the way.  I’ve had a cough for some time past, and I expect I’m in a consumption.”

“You make too much of a little thing, Rachel,” said the cooper.  “I don’t think Jack meant anything.”

“I’m sure, what I said was complimentary,” said Jack.

Rachel shook her head incredulously.

“Yes it was.  Ask Ida.  Why won’t you draw Aunt Rachel, Ida?  I think she’d make a capital picture.”

“So I will,” said Ida, hesitatingly, “if she will let me.”

“Now, Aunt Rachel, there’s a chance for you,” said Jack.  “I advise you to improve it.  When it’s finished, it can be hung up at the Art Rooms, and who knows but you may secure a husband by it?”

“I wouldn’t marry,” said his aunt, firmly compressing her lips, “not if anybody’d go down on their knees to me.”

“Now I am sure, Aunt Rachel, that’s cruel in you.”

“There ain’t any man that I’d trust my happiness to.”

“She hasn’t any to trust,” observed Jack, sotto voce.

“They’re all deceivers,” pursued Rachel, “the best of ’em.  You can’t believe what one of ’em says.  It would be a great deal better if people never married at all.”