"Not better than _that_, lady? I hope for the time when I shall paint
anything but your own bright eyes and lips equal to life."

"(Thomas, did you ever?) But it must take a long time, sir," said
Henrietta, blushing, "to paint equal to that."

"I was prenticed to it, miss," said the young man, smartly touching up
the composition--"prenticed to it in the caves of Spain and Portingale,
ever so long and two year over."

There was a laugh from the crowd; and a new man who had worked himself in
next me, said, "He's a smart chap, too; ain't he?"

"And what a eye!" exclaimed Henrietta softly.

"Ah! He need have a eye," said the man.

"Ah! He just need," was murmured among the crowd.

"He couldn't come that 'ere burning mountain without a eye," said the
man. He had got himself accepted as an authority, somehow, and everybody
looked at his finger as it pointed out Vesuvius. "To come that effect in
a general illumination would require a eye; but to come it with two
dips--why, it's enough to blind him!"

That impostor, pretending not to have heard what was said, now winked to
any extent with both eyes at once, as if the strain upon his sight was
too much, and threw back his long hair--it was very long--as if to cool
his fevered brow. I was watching him doing it, when Henrietta suddenly