ael
was clever and skilful, though that alone often made the master marvel.

'He is my pupil now, but some day he will be my master, and I shall
learn of him,' Perugino would often say as he watched the boy at work.
But more than all, the pure sweet nature and the polished gentleness of
his manners charmed the heart of the master, and he loved to have the
boy always near him, and to teach him was his greatest pleasure.

Those quiet days in the Perugia studio never lasted very long. From all
quarters came calls to Perugino, and, much as he loved work, he could
not finish all that was wanted.

It happened once when he was in Florence that a certain prior begged
him to come and fresco the walls of his convent. This prior was very
famous for making a most beautiful and expensive blue colour which he
was anxious should be used in the painting of the convent walls. He was
a mean, suspicious man, and would not trust Perugino with the precious
blue colour, but always held it in his own hands and grudgingly doled
it out in small quantities, torn between the desire to have the colour
on his walls and his dislike to parting with anything so precious.

As Perugino noted this, he grew angry and determined to punish the
prior's meanness. The next time therefore that there was a blue sky to
be painted, he put at his side a large bowl of fresh water, and then
called on the prior to put out a small quantity of the blue colour in a
little vase. Each time he dipped his brush into the vase, Perugino
washed it out with a swirl in the bowl at his side, so that most of the
colour was left in the water, and very little was put on to the picture.

'I pray thee fill the vase again with blue,' he said carelessly when
the colour was all gone. The prior groaned aloud, and turned grudgingly
to his little bag.

'Oh what a quantity of blue is swallowed up by this plaster!' he said,
as he gazed at the white wall, which scarcely showed a trace of the
precious colour.

'Yes,' said Perugino cheerfully, 'thou canst see thyself how it goes.'

Then afterwards, when the prior had sadly gone off with his little
empty bag, Perugino carefully poured the water from the bowl and
gathered together the grains of colour which had sunk to the bottom.

'Here is something that belongs to thee,' he said sternly to the
astonished prior. 'I would have thee learn to trust honest men and not
treat them as thieves. For with all thy suspicious care, it was easy to
ro