jotted down a little image of the Virgin in a niche on the wall, and one
of the people called out,--Mr. Arbuton was translating,--'Look there!
with one touch he's made our Blessed Lady.' 'O,' says the painter,
'that's nothing; with three touches I can make the entire Holy Family.'
And they all laughed; and that little joke, you know, won my heart,--I
don't hear many jokes from Mr. Arbuton;--and so I said what a blessed
life a painter's must be, for it would give you a right to be a vagrant,
and you could wander through the world, seeing everything that was
lovely and funny, and nobody could blame you; and I wondered everybody
who had the chance didn't learn to sketch. Mr. Arbuton took it
seriously, and said people had to have something more than the chance to
learn before they could sketch, and that most of them were an affliction
with their sketchbooks, and he had seen too much of the sad effects of
drawing from casts. And he put me in the wrong, as he always does. Don't
you see? I didn't want to learn drawing; I wanted to be a painter, and
go about sketching beautiful old convents, and sit on camp-stools on
pleasant afternoons, and joke with people. Of course, he couldn't
understand that. But I know the artist could. O Fanny, if it had only
been the painter whose arm I took that first day on the boat, instead of
Mr. Arbuton! But the worst of it is, he is making a hypocrite of me, and
a cowardly, unnatural girl. I wanted to go nearer and look at the
painter's sketch; but I was ashamed to say I'd never seen a real
artist's sketch before, and I'm getting to be ashamed, or to seem
ashamed, of a great many innocent things. He has a way of not seeming to
think it possible that any one he associates with can differ from him.
And I do differ from him. I differ from him as much as my whole past
life differs from his; I know I'm just the kind of production that he
disapproves of, and that I'm altogether irregular and unauthorized and
unjustifiable; and though it's funny to have him talking to me as if I
must have the sympathy of a rich girl with his ideas, it's provoking,