A little four-year-old girl stood in her room making pictures upon the white walls. On every side could be seen drawings of horses and dogs, cows, rabbits, and sheep. The walls were covered with pictures as high as the chubby hand could reach.

In the doorway stood the father, watching his little daughter. So wonderful were her drawings for a little child that the neighbors often came into the tiny room to look at the pictures on the walls.

"My little Rosa will be an artist some day," said the father, "but she can never be a great artist because she is a girl. How I wish she were a boy!"

In those days it was not thought proper for a girl to do anything that would take her away from home. "A girl should stay in the house," people said. "She should spend her time in sewing and in helping her mother."

Rosa Bonheur's home was in France. She was the eldest of four children. Her father gave lessons in drawing and made pictures for books. The little cottage in which she was born was in a beautiful part of the country. Here, with her two younger brothers and a baby sister, she lived a happy life.

Rosa loved animals, and she had many pets. Dogs that had no home came to her, and they were never turned away. She fed the wild rabbits and tamed the squirrels. If a stray horse wandered by, it was given food and water, and cared for until its owner could be found.

The child artist drew pictures of all these animals. She studied them as they ran or walked or lay down to rest.

When her little brothers were old enough to run about, they loved to follow their sister from place to place. Often they went with her to the roadside, where she made pictures for them in the sand with a pointed stick.

Sometimes her dogs came too and sat for their pictures. The passers-by stopped to see the rosy-cheeked little girl drawing animals and landscapes along the sandy way.

In the long winter evenings Rosa amused herself and her brothers by cutting pictures of animals and people from pieces of paper.