found him established in a very humble studio near the Piazza Barberini,
where, apparently, fame and fortune had not yet found him out. Rowland
took a fancy to him and bought several of his pictures; Singleton made
few speeches, but was grateful. Rowland heard afterwards that when he
first came to Rome he painted worthless daubs and gave no promise
of talent. Improvement had come, however, hand in hand with patient
industry, and his talent, though of a slender and delicate order, was
now incontestable. It was as yet but scantily recognized, and he had
hard work to live. Rowland hung his little water-colors on the parlor
wall, and found that, as he lived with them, he grew very fond of
them. Singleton was a diminutive, dwarfish personage; he looked like
a precocious child. He had a high, protuberant forehead, a transparent
brown eye, a perpetual smile, an extraordinary expression of modesty and
patience. He listened much more willingly than he talked, with a little
fixed, grateful grin; he blushed when he spoke, and always offered his
ideas in a sidelong fashion, as if the presumption were against them.
His modesty set them off, and they were eminently to the point. He was
so perfect an example of the little noiseless, laborious artist whom
chance, in the person of a moneyed patron, has never taken by the hand,
that Rowland would have liked to befriend him by stealth. Singleton had
expressed a fervent admiration for Roderick's productions, but had
not yet met the young master. Roderick was lounging against the
chimney-piece when he came in, and Rowland presently introduced him. The
little water-colorist stood with folded hands, blushing, smiling, and
looking up at him as if Roderick were himself a statue on a pedestal.
Singleton began to murmur something about his pleasure, his admiration;
the desire to make his compliment smoothly gave him a kind of grotesque
formalism. Roderick looked down at him surprised, and suddenly burst
into a laugh. Singleton paused a moment and then, with an intenser
smile, went on: "Well, sir, your statues are beautiful, all the same!"