"I know you want to see the Riggs armor most of all," she said, "and Margaret and James have been talking a lot about the Morgan collection and the Ethels told me on the way in that they had seen in the Sunday papers reproductions of some of the pictures in the Altman collections and they want to see the originals. We can see all those later on, but first we will look for a minute at a very famous picture by a Frenchwoman, Rosa Bonheur."
"Oh, I remember about her," said Helen. "She used to wear men's clothes when she was working in her studio. She said skirts bothered her."
"I should think they would," said James. "I remember about her, too. She made a specialty of animals and sometimes she had lions and other wild animals from some Zoo, and let them wander about. She needed to be dressed so she could skip lively if they made any demonstration!"
"Those are huge horses, aren't they," said Ethel Blue, as they stood before the "Horse Fair."
"They look as if they were 'feeling gayly,' as the North Carolina mountaineers say," quoted Dorothy.
"What is it all about?" asked Miss Graham.
"Why, I don't know," answered Ethel Blue slowly. "Is it about anything in particular? Isn't it just a lot of horses being taken to a Horse Fair for exhibition?"
Miss Graham nodded and said that that was probably all there was to it. Then she led them to a picture by a French artist, Meissonier.
"I spot Napoleon," said Tom promptly, as they took up their position.
"This is called 'Friedland, 1807,'" said Miss Graham.
Before she could ask any question or make any suggestion about the picture, Helen had explained "Friedland."
"That was one of Napoleon's famous battles. Here he defeated the Russians and Prussians."
"Eighteen hundred and seven?" repeated James. "Why, Napoleon was at the very height of his power then, wasn't he?"
"He looks it," said Margaret. "Doesn't he look as if he were the lord of the world? And how those men around him gaze at him with adoration! He certainly had a wonderful ability for making himself beloved by his soldiers!"
Miss Graham had been listening to these comments with the greatest interest.
"What difference do you see between this picture and the 'Horse Fair'?" she asked.
They looked carefully at the picture before them and Ethel Blue scampered back to refresh her memory on the "Horse Fair."