using play of
cross-purposes came in to mislead her. Wharton suddenly found that
Hazard let Miss Dudley have her own way to an extent permitted to no one
else. Esther was not conscious that the expression of a feeling or a
wish on her part carried any special weight, but there could be no doubt
that if Miss Dudley seemed to want any thing very much, Mr. Hazard
showed no sense of shame in suddenly forgetting his fixed theories and
encouraging her to do what she pleased. This point was settled when she
had been some ten days at work trying to satisfy Wharton's demands,
which were also Mr. Hazard's, in regard to the character and expression
of St. Cecilia. Catherine was so earnest not to be made repulsive, and
Esther's own tastes lay so strongly in the same direction, that when it
came to the point, she could not force herself to draw such a figure as
was required; she held out with a sort of feminine sweetness such as
cried aloud for discipline, and there was no doubt that Wharton was
quite ready to inflict it. In spite of Catherine, and Esther too, he
would have carried his point, had Esther not appealed to Mr. Hazard;
but this strenuous purist, who had worried Wharton and the building
committee with daily complaints that the character of their work wanted
spiritual earnestness, now suddenly, at a word from Miss Dudley, turned
about and encouraged her, against Wharton's orders, to paint a figure,
which, if it could be seen, which was fortunately not the case, must
seem to any one who cared for such matters, out of keeping with all the
work which surrounded it.

"Do you know," said Esther to Mr. Hazard, "that Mr. Wharton insists on
my painting Catherine as though she were forty years old and rheumatic?"

"I know," he replied, glancing timidly towards the procession of stern
and elderly saints and martyrs, finished and unfinished, which seemed to
bear up the church walls. "Do you think she would feel at home here if
she were younger or prettier?"

"No! Honestly, I don't think she would," said Esther, becoming bold as
he became timid. "I will paint Cecilia eighty years old, if Mr. Wharton
wants her so. She will have lost her touch on the piano, and her voice
will be cracked, but if you choose to set such an example to your choir,
I will obey. But I can't ask Catherine to sit for such a figure. I will
send out for some old woman, and draw from her."

"I can't spare Miss Brooke," said Hazard hastily. "The church needs her.