and it used to distress mother so much. A famous portrait painter--I
can't recall his name though I am sure it began with S--saw one of her
sketches by accident and insisted that we ought to send her to Paris to
study. Kesiah was wild to go at the time, but of course it was out of
the question that a Virginia lady should go off by herself and paint
perfectly nude people in a foreign city. There was a dreadful scene, I
remember, and Kesiah even wrote to Uncle William Burwell and asked him
to come down and win mother over. He came immediately, for he was the
kindest soul, but, of course after he understood, he decided against
it. Why on earth should a girl want to go streaking across the water to
study art, he asked, when she had a home she could stay in and men folk
who could look after her? They both told her she made herself ridiculous
when she talked of ambition, and as they wouldn't promise her a penny
to live on, she was obliged in the end to give up the idea. She nursed
mother very faithfully, I must say, as long as she lived, never leaving
her a minute night or day for the last year of her illness. Don't
misjudge poor Kesiah, Jonathan, she has a good heart at bottom, though
she has always been a little soured on account of her disappointment."

"Oh, she was cut out for an old maid, one can see that," rejoined Gay,
only half interested in the history of his aunt, for he seldom exerted
his imagination except under pressure of his desires, "and, by the way,
mother, what kind of man was my Uncle Jonathan?"

"The dearest creature, my son, heaven alone knows what his loss meant
to me! Such consideration! Such generosity! Such delicacy! He and Kesiah
never got on well, and this was the greatest distress to me."

"Did you ever hear any queer stories about him? Was he--well--ah, wild,
would you say?"