Page:Emma Speed Sampson--The shorn lamb.djvu/20

16 father are the beginning, although the studio is something that kept on staying, and I believe I'm going to miss it something awful.

"My Father, my first father, I mean, was a great big man, with shiny yellow hair, and he was an artist. Daddy says he would have been a great artist if he had lived long enough. Daddy used to know him real well and used to sigh and sigh when he turned over his drawings in the big portfolio."

"Then the studio must have started with your father," suggested Philip.

"Yes, he was the first. It was a great big studio down on West Tenth, and you had to go through somebody's house to get to it, unless you wanted to go over the roof and down the Mygatts' fire escape. Sometimes Daddy and I chose that route, when we were hard up and didn't want to meet the person in the house in front who had a way of collecting rents. It was the charmingest studio in the whole village because it had outside steps and a little porch. Just think of a porch in New York! One time it used to be over a stable, but by and by the stable got to be a garage. Things changed all around, but the studio was always just the same. It was big and had side windows and a skylight, too, and all kinds of nice cubby holes and cor-