tered--"for out there," he finished,
nodding his head in the direction of the gate.

If Eugene vouchsafed any reply, it was lost in a loud, shrill cry from
above, as a small, intensely nervous-looking woman in blue silk ran
half-way down the stairs to meet him and caught him tearfully in her
arms.

"Dear old mater!" said Eugene.

Joe went out of the front-door quickly.

III

OLD HOPES

The door which Ariel had entered opened upon a narrow hall, and down
this she ran to her own room, passing, with face averted, the entrance
to the broad, low-ceilinged chamber that had served Roger Tabor as a
studio for almost fifty years. He was sitting there now, in a hopeless
and disconsolate attitude, with his back towards the double doors,
which were open, and had been open since their hinges had begun to give
way, when Ariel was a child. Hearing her step, he called her name, but
did not turn; and, receiving no answer, sighed faintly as he heard her
own door close upon her.

Then, as his eyes wandered about the many canvases which leaned against
the dingy walls, he sighed again. Usually they showed their brown
backs, but to-day he had turned them all to face outward. Twilight,
sunset, moonlight (the Court-house in moonlight), dawn, morning, noon
(Main Street at noon), high summer, first spring, red autumn,
midwinter, all were there--illimitably detailed, worked to a smoothness
like a glaze, and all lovingly done with unthinkable labor.

And there were "Italian Flower-Sellers," damsels with careful hair, two
figures together, one blonde, the other as brunette as lampblack, the
blonde--in pink satin and blue slippers--leaning against a pillar and
smiling over the golden coins for which she had exchanged her posies;
the brunette seated at her feet, weeping upon an unsold bouquet. There
were red-sashed "Fisher Lads" wading with butterfly-nets on their
shoulders; there was a "Tying the Ribbon on Pussy's Neck"; there were
portraits in oil and petrifactions in crayon, as hard and tight as the
purses of those who had refused to accept them, leaving them upon their
maker's hands because the likeness had failed.

After a time the old man got up, went to his easel near a window, and,
sighing again, began patiently to work upon one of these failures--a
portrait, in oil, of a savage old lady, which he was doing from a
photograph. The expression of the mouth and the shape of the nose had
not pleased her descendants and the be