everyday frock, she had sat perched up on a high stool, or on
a pile of boxes, dreaming to herself, or listening to the talk
between the two men.

"That man is a fool," the American would exclaim, dashing his
brush across a whole morning's work; "that man is a
presumptuous fool who, here in Florence, here where those
others have lived and died, dares to stand before an easel and
imagine that he can paint--and I have been that man!" He was
wont to grow noisy and loquacious over his failures--not moody
and dumb, as some men do.

"You concern yourself too much," M. Linders would reply
calmly, putting the finishing touch to Madelon as a _bergère_
standing in the midst of a flock of sheep, and a green
landscape--like the enlarged top of a _bonbonnière_. "You are too
ambitious, _mon cher_--you are little, and want to be great--hence
your discomfort; whilst I, who am little, and know it, remain
content."

"May I be spared such content!" growled the other, who was
daily exasperated by the atrocities his friend produced by way
of pictures. It was beyond his comprehension how any man could
paint such to his disgrace, and then calmly contemplate them
as the work of his own hands. "Heaven preserve me from such
content, I say!"

"But it is there you are all in the wrong," says M. Linders,
quite unmoved by his companion's uncomplimentary energy. "You
agitate, you disturb yourself with the idea that some day you