A Bookful of Girls

“You’re partial, Madge.”

“Not a bit of it. But I know an interesting thing when I see it. If you win the prize,” she asked abruptly, “what shall you do with the money?”

“If you go to the moon next week, what shall you do with the green cheese?” Eleanor retorted, with an unprecedented outburst of sarcasm.

“I think you might answer my question,” said Madge; and at that instant the door opened and a hush fell upon the room.

The suspense was not painfully prolonged. The Curator of the Art Museum, who had been associated with Mrs. Jacques and Mr. Salome as judge, stepped upon the platform, from which Madge and Eleanor had precipitately retreated, and made the following announcement:

“We have, on the whole,” he said, “been very well pleased with the work we have had to consider. In fact, several of the sketches were better than anything we had looked for. Nevertheless our decision was not a difficult one, and our choice is unanimous. The prize which Mrs. Jacques has had the originality and the generosity to offer has been awarded to Mary Eleanor Merritt.”

“And now will you answer my question?”

Madge and Eleanor were walking home together through the light snow which had just begun to fall. They had been curiously shy of speaking, and, before the silence was broken, a pretty wreath of snow had formed itself about the rim of each of their black felt hats, while little ribbons of it were decorating the folds of their garments.

“What are you going to do with your green cheese?”

“I shall go to Paris next autumn,” said Eleanor, tightly clasping the check which she held inside her muff.

“That’s what I thought,” said Madge; and if her eyes grew a trifle red and moist it was perhaps natural enough, since the snow was flying straight into them.

CHAPTER II

THE MINIATURE

“What makes you keep looking at me, Eleanor Merritt? You’re not a bit of a good model!”

Thus reproved, Eleanor once more fixed her eyes upon a very bad oil-portrait of Great-grandfather Burtwell, an elderly man of a wooden countenance, in stock and choker, surmounting an expanse of black broadcloth which occupied two-thirds of the canvas.

The girls were established in what was known as the spare-room of the Burtwell house, which, with its north light and usual freedom from visitors made a very good studio. Madge was painting a miniature of Eleanor. The diminutive size of her undertaking was causing her a good deal of embarrassment, and she was consequently inclined to be rather severe with her sitter.

“You know I am not going to have many more chances of looking at you for a year to come,” Eleanor urged, in a tone of meek dejection.

“And I can’t see you, even now,” Madge persisted, “if you don’t turn more toward the light.”

There was silence again for some minutes, while Madge painted steadily on. Difficult as was this new task which she had set herself, she was captivated with it. However the miniature might turn out as a likeness, she felt sure that each stroke of her brush was making a prettier picture of it. The eyes already had the real Eleanor look, and the hair was “pretty nice.” The mouth was troublesome, to be sure, and to-day she did not feel inspired to improve it, and had turned her attention to less important details.

“You’ve got such a pretty ear!” she remarked presently, as she touched its outermost rim with a hair line, cocking her head to one side, the while, in a very professional manner; “Did you ever notice what a pretty ear you have?”

“Better be careful how you talk about it,” Eleanor laughed, “for fear it should begin to burn!”

The artist looked in some trepidation at the feature in question, but its soft hue did not deepen. She took the precaution, however, to change the subject; to one which she often chose, indeed, for the sake of the animation it brought into the pretty face of her model. Eleanor’s “repose” sometimes bothered her.

“What shall you do the first day in Paris?” Madge asked.

“I shall write to you.”

“Good gracious! You won’t write to me before you have seen the Louvre!”

“I shall write to you the very first minute. And then I shall write again that same evening, and tell you whether there really is a Louvre! If there shouldn’t be one, you know, I shouldn’t feel so like a pig in being there without you!”

“You needn’t feel like a pig, as far as that goes,” said Madge. “I couldn’t have gone to Paris if I had won the prize.”

“Why not?”

“Well, I had it out with Father this morning. He says it’s not a mere matter of money; that if he and Mother thought well of my going, they could manage it.”

“O Madge! Can’t you make them think well of it?”

“I’m afraid not. Father never did really believe in my going in for art, and I think he believes in it less now than he ever did. He says I’ve been at it for three years, and I haven’t painted a pretty picture yet. And he says he doesn’t see what good it’s going to do me in after-life; that if I marry I sha’n’t keep it up, and there wouldn’t be any good in my trying to; – which is, of course a mistake, only I can’t make him believe that it is, – and he says that if I don’t marry, I’ve got to earn my living sooner or later.”

“Why, but that’s just it, Madge! You’re going to be able to earn your living! You’re sure to!”

But Madge was again engrossed in her work. The afternoon would soon draw to a close, and if she wished to carry out her designs upon that ear it behooved her to stop talking. Though her little picture was an oval of three inches by four, it had cost her more strokes than any canvas of ten times the size had ever done. And Eleanor was to sail in a fortnight!

At last the light began to fade, and Madge knew that she must stop.

“What do you suppose Father said to me this morning?” she asked, as she washed out her brushes and put her paint-box in order.

“I can’t imagine.”

“Well, he said that when any good judge thought my pictures worth paying for in good hard cash, it would be time to think of sending me ‘traipsing over the world with my paint-pot.’ He said that if I would come to him with a fifty-dollar bill of my own earning he should begin to think there was some sense in my art-talk.”

“Did he really say that? Why, Madge, who knows?”

Madge had shut up her paint-box and moved to the window, where she was gloomily looking down into her neighbours’ backyards.

“If you mean Noah’s Dove,” she said, “You might as well give him up. He’s come back for the thirteenth time.”

Now “Noah’s Dove” was the name which Madge had bestowed upon a small bundle of pen-and-ink sketches which she had been sending about to the illustrated papers for two or three months past, and which had earned their name by the persistency with which they had found their way back again. The girls had both thought them funny and original; indeed Eleanor, with the partiality of one’s best friend, did not hesitate to pronounce them better than many of the things that got accepted. Up to this time, however, no editor had seemed disposed to recognise their merits, and they had been repeatedly and ignominiously rejected.

“But you’ll keep on sending them, won’t you, Madge?” Eleanor insisted.

“Of course I shall, as long as there is a picture-paper left in the country; though the postage does cost an awful lot!”

The sun had set, and a tinge of rosy colour was spreading across the northern sky behind the chimneys. The girls stood silent for a moment, watching the colour deepen, while a wistful look came into Eleanor’s face.

“After all, Madge,” she said; “it must be nice to have somebody think for you, even when he doesn’t think the way you want him to.”

“Oh, of course, Father’s a dear. I don’t suppose I would swap him off, even for Paris!”

“I wish I could even remember my father or my mother, or anybody that really belonged to me!” Eleanor said; then, feeling that she was making an appeal for sympathy, a thing which she was principled against doing, she turned her eyes away from the tender, beguiling colour behind the chimneys, and looked, instead, at the big oil portrait on the wall. “It’s something to have even a painted grandfather of your own!” she declared.

“How I should love to give you mine!” laughed Madge. “He’s such a horrible daub, and I should so like to have the frame when it comes time to exhibit! You would not insist upon having him in a frame, would you, Nell?”

Presently the girls went down-stairs together and Eleanor stayed to tea, and told the family all about her Paris plans, and how she felt like a pig to be going without Madge. And all the time, as she talked to these kindly, sympathetic people, it seemed to her that Madge was even more to be envied than she; and she wished she knew how to say so in an acceptable manner. But Eleanor found as much difficulty as most of us do, in expressing our best and truest thoughts, and so the Burtwell family never knew what a heart-warming impression they had made upon their guest.

Eleanor had lived for the past three years with a married cousin, a daughter of the not particularly congenial or affectionate Aunt Sarah, now deceased, who had brought her up from babyhood. The gentle, sensitive girl, with the artistic temperament, had never been happy with her cousin, though the latter was far from suspecting the fact. Mrs. Hamilton Hicks was fond of Eleanor, or imagined herself to be so, and she always gave her young cousin her due share of credit, in view of the fact that they had “never had any words together.” Nevertheless, she had acceded very readily to the Paris plan, and had herself taken pains to find a suitable chaperon for the young traveller.

The result was, that on the fifteenth of September Eleanor went forth into the great world in company with a lively and voluble Frenchwoman, a lady whom she had seen but twice before in her life, who had promised to establish her in a good private family in Paris. And since Mrs. Hamilton Hicks had negotiated the arrangement, its success was a foregone conclusion.

When Madge left the railway station after bidding Eleanor good-bye, and stepped out into the crowded city thoroughfare, the world seemed to her very empty and desolate, in spite of the multitude of her fellow-creatures who jostled against her. She could think of nothing but Eleanor, standing on the platform of the car as the train moved out of the station, and she was desperately sorry to have lost the last sight of her friend’s tearful face, because of a curious blur that had come over her own eyes at the moment. At the recollection, she mechanically put her hand into her pocket in search of the miniature which she usually carried about with her. She had left it at home lest she should lose it in the crowded railway station. It gave her a pang not to find it, and she made up her mind then and there that she would never go without it again.

The moment she reached her own room she seized the picture and had a good look at it. She had placed it in the inner gilt rim of an old daguerreotype, which set it off very nicely. She had discarded the hard leather daguerreotype case, as being too clumsy to carry about in her pocket, and in its place had made a sort of pocket-book of red morocco which was a sufficient protection for the glass, in her careful keeping.

She had never liked the picture so well as she did to-day, for she thought of it now for the first time, not as a work of art, but as a likeness, and imperfect as it was, even from that point of view, it gave her very great pleasure to look at it. Yes, decidedly, she must always have it by her hereafter; and she slipped it into her pocket while she made herself ready for tea.

But supposing she should have her pocket picked! A pickpocket, she reflected, might, in the hastiness which must always characterise his operations, mistake the little leather case for a purse, and then – how should she ever get the precious miniature back again? “Not that he would want to keep it,” she said to herself, as she took it out once more for a parting look, – “unless he should lose his heart to that ear!” – and she regarded the tiny pink object with pardonable pride. But with the best intentions in the world, how would he be able to restore it? She must put her address in the case; that would be a simple matter.

An hour later, the family were gathered about the great round table in the pleasant sitting-room, pursuing their various avocations by the light of an excellent argand burner. Mr. Burtwell was reading his evening paper, imparting occasional choice bits to his wife and his eldest daughter, Julia, who were dealing with a heap of mending. The two younger children were playing lotto, while Ned was having a hand-to-hand tussle with his Cicero, a foeman likely to prove worthy of his steel.

Madge had taken out a sheet of paper, with a view to inscribing her address upon it. The mere act of doing so had called up to her mind so vivid an impression of the thief for whose information it was destined, that she suddenly felt impelled to address to him a few words of admonition. With an agreeable sense of the absurdity of her performance, she began a letter to this figment of her imagination, and this is what she wrote:

“Dear Pickpocket,

“For, as I shall never leave this miniature about anywhere, you must be a pickpocket if it falls into your hands. To begin with, then; it is not a good miniature at all, and there is no use in your trying to sell it. In fact, it is a very bad miniature, as you will see if you know anything about such things, which you probably don’t. But it is very valuable to me, and so I hope you will return it to me as soon as you find out how bad it is. You probably won’t want to bring it yourself, – I’m sure I should not think you would! – but you can perfectly well send it by express, and you can let them collect charges on delivery, unless you think that, under the circumstances, you ought to prepay them. My address is,

Miss Margaret Burtwell,” etc.

Madge read over her production with an amusement and satisfaction which quite filled, for the moment, the aching void of which she had been so painfully conscious. The letter occupied but one-half the sheet, and, as the young artist’s eye fell upon the blank third page, she was seized with an irresistible impulse to draw a picture on it.

The figure of the pickpocket was by this time so vivid to her mind, that she began making a pen-and-ink sketch of him, as a dark-browed villain in the act of rifling the pocket of a very haughty young woman proceeding along the street with an air of extreme self-consciousness. The drawing was on a very small scale, and when it was finished to her satisfaction there was still half the page unoccupied. Madge hastily wrote under the sketch the words: “The Crime,” and a moment later she was engrossed in the execution of a still more dramatic design, representing the criminal in the hands of two stalwart policemen, being ignominiously dragged through the street toward a sort of mediæval fortress, with walls some twenty feet thick, upon which was inscribed in enormous characters, “JAIL.” Still more action was given the drawing by the introduction of two or three small and gleeful ragamuffins, dancing a derisive war-dance behind the captive, and of two dogs of doubtful lineage, barking like mad on the outskirts of the group. Under this picture was inscribed, “The Consequences of Crime,” and at the bottom of the page appeared the words, “Behold and tremble!”

“What’s Artful Madge up to?” asked Ned, as he closed his Latin Dictionary with a bang.

“Writing a letter,” Madge replied, composedly.

“To the Prize Pig?”

“The what?”

“The Prize Pig! You know Eleanor said she felt like a pig to be going to Paris without you, and as she got the prize–”

“You impudent boy!”

“Not in the least. I’m only witty.”

“Witty!”

“Yes, – I’ve heard wit defined as the unexpected.”

“The dictionary doesn’t define it so, and good manners don’t define impudence as wit.”

“We’re not discussing impudence, we’re discussing wit. And I know positively that wit is defined as the unexpected.”

“Let’s have your authority,” said Mr. Burtwell, who had not heard the first part of the discussion.

“Let us see what the dictionary says,” suggested Julia, who was the scholar of the family.

“Very well; and what will you bet that I’m not right?”

“We don’t bet in this family,” said Mr. Burtwell, with decision.

“Oh, well, that’s only a form of speech. What will you do for me, Madge, if I’m right?”

“I’ll put you into an allegorical sketch.”

“Good! I always wondered that you didn’t make use of such good material in the artful line!”

The wire dictionary-stand, containing the portly form of Webster Unabridged, was instantly brought up to the light, and there was half a minute’s silence while Ned turned the leaves.

“Score me one!” he shouted, in high glee. “Listen to Webster! ‘Wit. 3. Felicitous association of objects not usually connected, so as to produce a pleasant surprise.’ Quite at your service, my artful relative, whenever you would like a sitting!”

“I protest! You haven’t won!”

“Haven’t won, indeed! I leave it to the gentlemen of the jury. Is not the name of Prize Pig for Miss Eleanor Merritt a ‘felicitous association of objects not usually connected’?”

“No! The association is infelicitous, and consequently it does not produce a ‘pleasant surprise.’”

The family listened with the amused tolerance with which they usually left such discussions to the two chief wranglers.

“I maintain,” insisted Ned, “that the association of objects is felicitous, and must be, because it was instituted by Miss Eleanor Merritt herself. She won the prize, and she said she was a pig.”

“But it doesn’t produce a pleasant surprise,” Madge objected.

“I beg your pardon! It has produced a pleasant surprise, as I can testify, for I have experienced it myself. What is your verdict, Mother?”

“My verdict is, that it’s a pity, as I always thought it was, that you are not to be a lawyer, and that Madge can’t do better than practise her drawing by making the allegorical sketch.”

That Mrs. Burtwell should be on Ned’s side was a foregone conclusion, and Madge appealed to her father.

“Father, is calling Eleanor Merritt a prize pig a form of wit?”

“Pretty poor wit I should call it!”

“Father is on my side!” shouted Ned. “He says it’s poor wit, which is only one way of saying that it is wit!”

“Can wit be poor?” asked Julia.

“Father says it can.”

“Then it isn’t wit!” Madge protested.

“I should like to know why not. Old Mr. Tanner is a poor man, but he’s a man for all that, and votes at elections for the highest bidder. And your logic’s poor, but I suppose you’d call it logic!”

“I have an idea!” cried Madge. “I’m going to make my fortune out of you! I’m going to make a pair of excruciatingly funny pictures of you! The first shall be called The Student and Logic, and the second shall be called Logic and the Student! In the first the student shall be patting Logic on the head, and in the second, – oh, it’s an inspiration!”

And forthwith Madge seized a large sheet of paper and began work.

“I’m not sure that this won’t be the beginning of a series,” she declared. “When it’s finished I shall send it to a funny paper and get fifty dollars for it, – and when I have got fifty dollars for it, Father will send me to Paris; won’t you, Daddy, dear?”

“What’s that? What’s that?” asked Mr. Burtwell.

“When I get fifty dollars, —or more!– for my Student, you will send me to Europe!”

“Oh, yes! And when you’re Queen of England I shall be presented at Court! Listen to what the paper says: ‘The Honourable Jacob Luddington and family have just returned from an extensive foreign tour. The two Miss Luddingtons were presented at the Court of St. James, where their exceptional beauty and elegance are said to have made a marked impression.’ Good for the Honourable Jacob! His father was my father’s chore-man, and here are his daughters hobnobbing with crowned heads!”

From which digression it is fair to conclude that Mr. Burtwell did not attach any great importance to his daughter’s question or to his own answer. But Madge put away the promise in the safest recesses of her memory as carefully as she had tucked the letter to her “dear pickpocket” inside the red morocco pocket-book. It seemed as if the one were likely to be called for about as soon as the other, – “which means never at all!” she said to herself, with a profound sigh.

“The throes of creation have begun,” Ned chuckled; and then, as he watched his sister’s business-like proceedings, marvelling the while at what he secretly considered her quite phenomenal skill, he let himself be sufficiently carried away by enthusiasm to remark, “I say, Madge, you’re no fool at that sort of thing, if you are a girl!”

CHAPTER III

NOAH’S DOVE

“I really think, Miss Burtwell, you might be a little more careful,” Miss Isabella Ricker wailed, in a tone of hopeless remonstrance. It was the third time that morning that Madge had knocked against her easel, and human nature could bear no more.

“I think so too,” said Madge, in a voice as dejected as her victim’s own. “If I only knew how to prowl more intelligently, I would, I truly would.”

“Tie yourself to your own easel,” suggested Delia Smith; “then that will have to go first.”

“You’re a good one to talk!” cried Mary Downing. “You’ve upset my things twice this very morning!”

“Put those two behind each other,” Josephine Wilkes suggested. “It will be a lesson to them.”

“And who’s going to sit behind the rear one?” somebody asked.

“Harriet Wells,” Delia Smith proposed. “Mr. Salome said ‘very good’ to her this morning; she must be proof against adversity.”

“No one is proof against adversity,” Madge declared, in a tragic tone; but her remark passed unheeded. The girls were already at work again, and nothing short of another wreck was likely to distract their attention. The scrape of a palette-knife, the tread of a prowler, or the shoving of a chair to one side, were the only sounds audible in the room, excepting when the occasional roar of an electric car or the rattle of a passing waggon came in at the open window. It was the first warm day in April.

Artful Madge’s sententious observation with regard to adversity was the fruit of bitter experience. Misfortune’s arrows had been raining thick and fast about her, and although she was holding her ground against them very well, she felt that adversity was a subject on which she was fitted to speak with authority.

In the first place, her Student series was proving to be quite as much of a Noah’s Dove as the first set of sketches which had so signally failed to find a permanent roosting-place in an inhospitable world. Only yesterday the familiar parcel had made its appearance on the front-entry table, that table which, for a year past, she had never come in sight of without a quicker beating of the heart. If she ever did have a bit of success, she often reflected, that piece of ancestral mahogany was likely to be the first to know of it. How often she had dreamed of the small business envelope, addressed in an unfamiliar hand, which might one day appear there! It would be half a second before she should take in the meaning of it. Then would come a premonitory thrill, instantly justified by a glance at the upper left-hand corner of the envelope, where the name of some great periodical would seem literally blazoned forth, however small the type in which it was printed. And then, – oh, then! the tearing open of the envelope, the unfolding of the sheet with trembling fingers, the check! Would it be for $10 or $15 or even $25, and might there be a word of editorial praise or admonition? Foolish, foolish dreams! And there was that hideous parcel, which she was getting to hate the very sight of! As she squeezed a long rope of burnt-sienna upon her palette, she made up her mind that she would wait a week before exposing herself to another disappointment. Perhaps the Student would improve with keeping, like violins and old masters. Certainly if he was anything like his prototype he needed maturing.

Meanwhile the model’s mouth was proving as troublesome to paint as Eleanor’s had been, and as Madge grew more and more perplexed with the problem of it she thought of the miniature with a fresh pang. For she had lost it! Three days ago it had somehow slipped from her possession. Had she left it lying on the table in the Public Library? Nobody there had seen anything of it. But on the very day of her loss she had been at the Library, examining the current numbers of all the illustrated papers, in the hope of gleaning some hint as to editorial tastes. She remembered reading Eleanor’s last letter there, the letter in which her friend had written that she was to have two years more of Paris. She had read the letter through twice, and then she had taken out the miniature and had a good look at it. To think of Eleanor, having two more years of Paris! And it had all come about so simply! She had merely persuaded her cousin, Mr. Hicks, to advance a few hundred dollars till she should be of age and at liberty to sell a bond.