weren't
so blurred. Other things, too, he might have heard that
would have amused him more as being less commonplace,
but pleased him no better, said by people who cast furtive
glances over their shoulders to see if anybody that might
be the artist was within reach of their discriminating
admiration; and here and there, if he had listened well,
a vigorous word that meant recognition and reward. It
was not that he did not long for the tritest word of
comment from the oracle before which he had chosen to
lay the fruit of his labors; indeed, he was so conscious
of his desire to know this opinion, not over clever as
he believed it, that he ran away on the evening of
varnishing-day. If he staid he felt that he would inevitably
compromise his dignity, so he hid himself with some
amiable people in Hampshire, who could be relied upon
not to worry him, for a week. He did not deny himself
the papers, however. They reached him in stacks, with
the damp chill of the afternoon post upon them; and in
their solid paragraphs he read the verdict of the British
public written out in words of proper length and much
the same phrases that had done duty for Eastlake and Sir
Martin Shee. Fortunately, the amiable people included
some very young people, so young that they could properly
compel Kendal to go into the fields with them and make
cowslip balls, and some robust girls of eighteen and
twenty, who mutely demanded the pleasure of beating him
at tennis every afternoon. He was able in this way to
work off the depression that visited him daily with the
damp odor of London art, criticism, quite independently
of its bias toward himself. He told himself that he had
been let off fairly easily, though he winced considerably
under the adulation of the _Daily Mercury_, and found
himself breathing most freely when least was said about
him. The day of his triumph in the _Mercury_ he made
monstrous cowslip balls, and thought that the world had
never been sufficiently congratulated upon possessing
the ideal simplicity of children.

Thereafter for two days nothing came, and he began to
grow restless. Then the _Decade_ made its weekly slovenly
appearance, without a wrapper. He opened it with the
accumulated interest of forty-eight hours, turned to
"Fine Arts," and girded himself to receive the _Decade's_
ideas. He read the first sentence twice--the article
opened curiously, for the _Decade_. He looked at the
cover to see whether he had not been m