A Bookful Of Girls Part 8

"Well, he said that when any good judge thought my pictures worth paying for in good hard cash, it would be time to think of sending me 'traipsing over the world with my paint-pot.' He said that if I would come to him with a fifty-dollar bill of my own earning he should begin to think there was some sense in my art-talk."

"Did he really say that? Why, Madge, who knows?"

Madge had shut up her paint-box and moved to the window, where she was gloomily looking down into her neighbours' backyards.

"If you mean Noah's Dove," she said, "You might as well give him up.

He's come back for the thirteenth time."

Now "Noah's Dove" was the name which Madge had bestowed upon a small bundle of pen-and-ink sketches which she had been sending about to the ill.u.s.trated papers for two or three months past, and which had earned their name by the persistency with which they had found their way back again. The girls had both thought them funny and original; indeed Eleanor, with the partiality of one's best friend, did not hesitate to p.r.o.nounce them better than many of the things that got accepted. Up to this time, however, no editor had seemed disposed to recognise their merits, and they had been repeatedly and ignominiously rejected.

"But you'll keep on sending them, won't you, Madge?" Eleanor insisted.

"Of course I shall, as long as there is a picture-paper left in the country; though the postage does cost an awful lot!"

The sun had set, and a tinge of rosy colour was spreading across the northern sky behind the chimneys. The girls stood silent for a moment, watching the colour deepen, while a wistful look came into Eleanor's face.

"After all, Madge," she said; "it must be nice to have somebody think for you, even when he doesn't think the way you want him to."

"Oh, of course, Father's a dear. I don't suppose I would swap him off, even for Paris!"

"I wish I could even remember my father or my mother, or anybody that really belonged to me!" Eleanor said; then, feeling that she was making an appeal for sympathy, a thing which she was principled against doing, she turned her eyes away from the tender, beguiling colour behind the chimneys, and looked, instead, at the big oil portrait on the wall. "It's something to have even a painted grandfather of your own!" she declared.

"How I should love to give you mine!" laughed Madge. "He's such a horrible daub, and I should so like to have the frame when it comes time to exhibit! You would not insist upon having him in a frame, would you, Nell?"

Presently the girls went down-stairs together and Eleanor stayed to tea, and told the family all about her Paris plans, and how she felt like a pig to be going without Madge. And all the time, as she talked to these kindly, sympathetic people, it seemed to her that Madge was even more to be envied than she; and she wished she knew how to say so in an acceptable manner. But Eleanor found as much difficulty as most of us do, in expressing our best and truest thoughts, and so the Burtwell family never knew what a heart-warming impression they had made upon their guest.

Eleanor had lived for the past three years with a married cousin, a daughter of the not particularly congenial or affectionate Aunt Sarah, now deceased, who had brought her up from babyhood. The gentle, sensitive girl, with the artistic temperament, had never been happy with her cousin, though the latter was far from suspecting the fact.

Mrs. Hamilton Hicks was fond of Eleanor, or imagined herself to be so, and she always gave her young cousin her due share of credit, in view of the fact that they had "never had any words together."

Nevertheless, she had acceded very readily to the Paris plan, and had herself taken pains to find a suitable chaperon for the young traveller.

The result was, that on the fifteenth of September Eleanor went forth into the great world in company with a lively and voluble Frenchwoman, a lady whom she had seen but twice before in her life, who had promised to establish her in a good private family in Paris. And since Mrs. Hamilton Hicks had negotiated the arrangement, its success was a foregone conclusion.

When Madge left the railway station after bidding Eleanor good-bye, and stepped out into the crowded city thoroughfare, the world seemed to her very empty and desolate, in spite of the mult.i.tude of her fellow-creatures who jostled against her. She could think of nothing but Eleanor, standing on the platform of the car as the train moved out of the station, and she was desperately sorry to have lost the last sight of her friend's tearful face, because of a curious blur that had come over her own eyes at the moment. At the recollection, she mechanically put her hand into her pocket in search of the miniature which she usually carried about with her. She had left it at home lest she should lose it in the crowded railway station. It gave her a pang not to find it, and she made up her mind then and there that she would never go without it again.

The moment she reached her own room she seized the picture and had a good look at it. She had placed it in the inner gilt rim of an old daguerreotype, which set it off very nicely. She had discarded the hard leather daguerreotype case, as being too clumsy to carry about in her pocket, and in its place had made a sort of pocket-book of red morocco which was a sufficient protection for the gla.s.s, in her careful keeping.

She had never liked the picture so well as she did to-day, for she thought of it now for the first time, not as a work of art, but as a likeness, and imperfect as it was, even from that point of view, it gave her very great pleasure to look at it. Yes, decidedly, she must always have it by her hereafter; and she slipped it into her pocket while she made herself ready for tea.

But supposing she should have her pocket picked! A pickpocket, she reflected, might, in the hastiness which must always characterise his operations, mistake the little leather case for a purse, and then--how should she ever get the precious miniature back again? "Not that he would want to keep it," she said to herself, as she took it out once more for a parting look,--"unless he should lose his heart to that ear!"--and she regarded the tiny pink object with pardonable pride.

But with the best intentions in the world, how would he be able to restore it? She must put her address in the case; that would be a simple matter.

An hour later, the family were gathered about the great round table in the pleasant sitting-room, pursuing their various avocations by the light of an excellent argand burner. Mr. Burtwell was reading his evening paper, imparting occasional choice bits to his wife and his eldest daughter, Julia, who were dealing with a heap of mending. The two younger children were playing lotto, while Ned was having a hand-to-hand tussle with his Cicero, a foeman likely to prove worthy of his steel.

Madge had taken out a sheet of paper, with a view to inscribing her address upon it. The mere act of doing so had called up to her mind so vivid an impression of the thief for whose information it was destined, that she suddenly felt impelled to address to him a few words of admonition. With an agreeable sense of the absurdity of her performance, she began a letter to this figment of her imagination, and this is what she wrote:

"DEAR PICKPOCKET,

"For, as I shall never leave this miniature about anywhere, you must be a pickpocket if it falls into your hands. To begin with, then; it is not a good miniature at all, and there is no use in your trying to sell it. In fact, it is a very bad miniature, as you will see if you know anything about such things, which you probably don't. But it is very valuable to me, and so I hope you will return it to me as soon as you find out how bad it is. You probably won't want to bring it yourself,--I'm sure I should not think you would!--but you can perfectly well send it by express, and you can let them collect charges on delivery, unless you think that, under the circ.u.mstances, you ought to prepay them. My address is,

Miss Margaret Burtwell," etc.

Madge read over her production with an amus.e.m.e.nt and satisfaction which quite filled, for the moment, the aching void of which she had been so painfully conscious. The letter occupied but one-half the sheet, and, as the young artist's eye fell upon the blank third page, she was seized with an irresistible impulse to draw a picture on it.

The figure of the pickpocket was by this time so vivid to her mind, that she began making a pen-and-ink sketch of him, as a dark-browed villain in the act of rifling the pocket of a very haughty young woman proceeding along the street with an air of extreme self-consciousness.

The drawing was on a very small scale, and when it was finished to her satisfaction there was still half the page unoccupied. Madge hastily wrote under the sketch the words: "The Crime," and a moment later she was engrossed in the execution of a still more dramatic design, representing the criminal in the hands of two stalwart policemen, being ignominiously dragged through the street toward a sort of mediaeval fortress, with walls some twenty feet thick, upon which was inscribed in enormous characters, "JAIL." Still more action was given the drawing by the introduction of two or three small and gleeful ragam.u.f.fins, dancing a derisive war-dance behind the captive, and of two dogs of doubtful lineage, barking like mad on the outskirts of the group. Under this picture was inscribed, "The Consequences of Crime,"

and at the bottom of the page appeared the words, "Behold and tremble!"

"What's Artful Madge up to?" asked Ned, as he closed his Latin Dictionary with a bang.

"Writing a letter," Madge replied, composedly.

"To the Prize Pig?"

"The what?"

"The Prize Pig! You know Eleanor said she felt like a pig to be going to Paris without you, and as she got the prize----"

"You impudent boy!"

"Not in the least. I'm only witty."

"Witty!"

"Yes,--I've heard wit defined as the unexpected."

"The dictionary doesn't define it so, and good manners don't define impudence as wit."

"We're not discussing impudence, we're discussing wit. And I know positively that wit is defined as the unexpected."

"Let's have your authority," said Mr. Burtwell, who had not heard the first part of the discussion.

"Let us see what the dictionary says," suggested Julia, who was the scholar of the family.

"Very well; and what will you bet that I'm not right?"

"We don't bet in this family," said Mr. Burtwell, with decision.

"Oh, well, that's only a form of speech. What will you do for me, Madge, if I'm right?"

"I'll put you into an allegorical sketch."

"Good! I always wondered that you didn't make use of such good material in the artful line!"

The wire dictionary-stand, containing the portly form of Webster Unabridged, was instantly brought up to the light, and there was half a minute's silence while Ned turned the leaves.