"Oh, mah goodness!" cried Miss Woodburn. "Is that the way you awtusts
talk to each othah? Well, Ah'm glad Ah'm not an awtust--unless I could
do all the talking."

"Artists cannot tell a fib," Alma said, "or even act one," and she
laughed in Beaton's upturned face.

He did not unbend his dreamy gaze. "You're quite right. The suggestions
are stupid."

Alma turned to Miss Woodburn: "You hear? Even when we speak of our own
work."

"Ah nevah hoad anything lahke it!"

"And the design itself ?" Beaton persisted.

"Oh, I'm not an art editor," Alma answered, with a laugh of exultant
evasion.

A tall, dark, grave-looking man of fifty, with a swarthy face and iron-
gray mustache and imperial and goatee, entered the room. Beaton knew the
type; he had been through Virginia sketching for one of the illustrated
papers, and he had seen such men in Richmond. Miss Woodburn hardly
needed to say, "May Ah introduce you to mah fathaw, Co'nel Woodburn, Mr.
Beaton?"

The men shook hands, and Colonel Woodburn said, in that soft, gentle,
slow Southern voice without our Northern contractions: "I am very glad to