children hindered the little boy's view of the picture, Jeff, in his
quality of host, lifted him under his arms and held him up so that he
could look as long as he liked.

The girl seemed ashamed of the good understanding before Westover. Jeff
offered to make a place for her among the other children who had looked
long enough, but she pulled the front of her bonnet across her face and
said that she did not want to look, and caught her brother by the hand
and ran away with him. Westover thought this charming, somewhat; he liked
the intense shyness which the child's intense passion had hidden from him
before.

Jeff acted as host to the neighbors who came to inspect the picture, and
they all came, within a circuit of several miles around, and gave him
their opinions freely or scantily, according to their several
temperaments. They were mainly favorable, though there was some frank
criticism, too, spoken over the painter's shoulder as openly as if he
were not by. There was no question but of likeness; all finer facts were
far from them; they wished to see how good a portrait Westover had made,
and some of them consoled him with the suggestion that the likeness would
come out more when the picture got dry.

Whitwell, when he came, attempted a larger view of the artist's work, but
apparently more out of kindness for him than admiration of the picture.
He said he presumed you could not always get a thing like that just right
the first time, and that you had to keep trying till you did get it; but
it paid in the end. Jeff had stolen down from the house with his dog,
drawn by the fascination which one we have injured always has for us;
when Whitwell suddenly turned upon him and asked, jocularly, "What do you
think, Jeff?" the boy could only kick his dog and drive it home, as a