Her thoughts would wander to the copy of the Venus de Medici that was hidden under Mrs.Blyth's coverlid; would vibrate between trembling eagerness to see it presented without longer delay, and groundless apprehension that Zack might, after all, not remember it, or not care to have it when it was given to him.

And as her thoughts wandered, so her eyes followed them.

Now she stole an anxious, inquiring look at Mrs.Blyth, to see if her hand was straying towards the hidden drawing.

Now she glanced shyly at Zack--only by moments at a time, and only when he was hardest at work with his port-crayon--to assure herself that he was always in the same good humor, and likely to receive her little present kindly, and with some appearance of being pleased to see what pains she had taken with it.

In this way her attention wandered incessantly from her employment; and thus it was that she made so much less progress than usual, and caused Mr.Blyth to suspect that the task he had set her was almost beyond her abilities.
"Splendid beginning, isn't it ?" said Zack, looking over her drawing.
"I defy the whole Royal Academy to equal it," continued the young gentleman, scrawling this uncompromising expression of opinion on the blank space at the bottom of Madonna's drawing, and signing his name with a magnificent flourish at the end.
His arm touched her shoulder while he wrote.