ny of
them, are there? And why should they all be sitting on the grass
like that? Enough to give them their deaths of cold!

_Second M.-of-F.P._ I expect they've been bathing.

_First M.-of-F.P._ They couldn't _all_ bathe in that fountain, and
then what do you make of their bringing out their violins?

[_The other_ M.-of-F. Person _making nothing of it, they pass
on._

_An Irritable Philistine_. Nonsense, Sir, you _can't_ admire them,
don't tell _me_! Do you mean to say _you_ ever saw all those blues,
and greens, and yellows, in Nature, Sir?

_His Companion_. I mean to say that that is how Nature appears to
an eye trained to see things in a true and not a merely conventional
light.

_The I.P._. Then all _I_ can say is, that if things ever appeared to
_me_ as unconventionally as all that, I should go straight home and
take a couple of liver pills, Sir. I should!

_First Frivolous Old Lady_. Here's another of them, my dear. It's no
use, we've _got_ to admire it, this is the kind of thing you and I
must be educated up to in our old age!

_Second F.O.L._ It makes me feel as if I was on board a yacht, that's
all I know--just look at the perspective in that room, all slanted up!

_First F.O.L._ That's your ignorance, my dear, it's quite the right
perspective for a Pastel, it's our rooms that are all wrong--not these
clever young gentlemen.

[_They go about chuckling and poking old ladylike fun at all
the more eccentric Pastels, and continue to enjoy themselves
immensely._

_First M.-of-F.P. (they have come to a Pastel depicting a young woman
seated on the Crescent Moon, nursing an infant_). H'm--very peculiar.
_I_ never saw Diana represented with a _baby_ before--did _you_?

_Second M.-of-F.P._ No--(_hopefully_)--but perhaps it's intended for
somebody else. But it's _not_ the place _I_ should choose to nurse an
infant in. It doesn't look safe, and it can't be very comfortable.

[_They go on into a smaller room, and come upon a sketch of a
small child, with an immense red mouth, and no visible nose,
eyes, or legs._

_First M.-of-F.P._ "_Little Girl in Black_"--what a very plain child,
to be sure!

_Second M.-of-F.P._ What there _is_ of it; but it looks to me as if
the artist had spent so much time over the black that he forgot to put
in the little girl--he's got her _mouth_, though.

_First M.-of-F.P._. Well, if it was _my_ child, I should insist upon
having the poor little