onde. She could not
have been more than fifteen; her skirts had not yet matured to the full
womanly length; she was still a child.

A handsome, mild, middle-aged woman appeared beside the stormy young
thing, and said in the voice which Ludlow had already heard, "Well,
Cornelia!" She seemed to make more account than the girl made of the
young fellow's looks. He was of the medium height for a man, but he was
so slight that he seemed of lower stature, and he eked out an effect of
distinction by brushing his little moustache up sharply at the corners
in a fashion he had learned in France, and by wearing a little black
dot of an imperial. His brow was habitually darkened by a careworn
frown, which came from deep and anxious thinking about the principles
and the practice of art. He was very well dressed, and he carried
himself with a sort of worldly splendor which did not intimidate the
lady before him. In the country women have no more apprehension of men
who are young and stylish and good-looking than they have in the city;
they rather like them to be so, and meet them with confidence in any
casual encounter.

The lady said, "Oh, thank you," as Ludlow came up to the girl with the
paper, and then she laughed with no particular intention, and said,
"It's one of my daughter's drawings."

"Oh, indeed!" said Ludlow, with a quick perception of the mother's
pride in it, and of all the potentialities of prompt intimacy. "It's
very good."

"Well, _I_ think so," said the lady, while the girl darkled and bridled
in young helplessness. If she knew that her mother ought not to be
offering a stranger her confidence like that, she did not know what to
do about it. "She was just going to take them home," said the mother
vaguely.

"I'm sorry," said Ludlow. "I seem to be a day after the fair, as far as
they're concerned."

"Well, I don't know," said the mother, with the same amiable vagueness.
She had some teeth gone, and when she smiled she tried to hide their
absence on the side next Ludlow; but as she was always smiling she did
not succeed perfectly. She looked doubtfully at her daughter, in the
manner of mothers whom no severity of snubbing can teach that their
daughters when well-grown girls can no longer be treated as infants. "I
don't know as you'd think you had lost much. We didn't expect they
_would_ take the premium, a _great_ deal."

"I should hope not," said Ludlow. "The competition was bad enough."

The mother seemed