air
that helps you to bear up. But what's the matter with the young lady in
young lady's clothes? Any dust on her?"

"What expressions!" said Mrs. Leighton. "Really, Alma, for a refined
girl you are the most unrefined!"

"Go on--about the girl in the picture!" said Alma, slightly knocking her
mother on the shoulder, as she stood over her.

"I don't see anything to her. What's she doing?"

"Oh, just being made love to, I suppose."

"She's perfectly insipid!"

"You're awfully articulate, mamma! Now, if Mr. Wetmore were to criticise
that picture he'd draw a circle round it in the air, and look at it
through that, and tilt his head first on one side and then on the other,
and then look at you, as if you were a figure in it, and then collapse
awhile, and moan a little and gasp, 'Isn't your young lady a little
too-too--' and then he'd try to get the word out of you, and groan and
suffer some more; and you'd say, 'She is, rather,' and that would give
him courage, and he'd say, 'I don't mean that she's so very--' 'Of
course not.' 'You understand?' 'Perfectly. I see it myself, now.' 'Well,
then'---and he'd take your pencil and begin to draw--'I should give
her a little more--Ah?' 'Yes, I see the difference.'--'You see the
difference?' And he'd go off to some one else, and you'd know that
you'd been doing the wishy-washiest thing in the world, though he hadn't
spoken a word of criticism, and couldn't. But he wouldn't have noticed
the expression at all; he'd have shown you where your drawing was bad.
He doesn't care for what he calls the literature of a thing; he says
that will take care of itself if the drawing's good. He doesn't like my
doing these chic things; but I'm going to keep it up, for I think it's
the nearest way to illustrating."

She took her sketch and pinned it up on the door.

"And has Mr. Beaton been about, yet?" asked her mother.

"No," said the girl, with her back still turned; and she added, "I
believe he's in New York; Mr. Wetmore's seen him."

"It's a little strange he doesn't call."

"It would be if he were not an artist. But artists never do anything
like other people. He was on his good behavior while he was with us, and
he's a great deal more conventional than most of them; but even he
can't keep it up. That's what makes me really think that women can never
amount to anything in art. They keep all their appointments, and fulfil
all their duties just as if they didn't know anything about art.