hall_ be!"

"All the 'willing' in the world won't do the deed if the judges 'will'
the other way, and their will tugs harder than ours!" laughed Margaret.
"It depends so much on the taste of the judges. There's a fashion in
pictures as in other things, and it's constantly changing."

"Is there? Why?"

"That I can't tell you, except that people tire of one style and like
another. First the classical school was the favourite, then
pre-Raphaelitism had its innings, then impressionism came up. Each
period in painting is generally boomed by some celebrated art critic who
deprecates the old-fashioned methods and cracks up the new. The public
are rather like sheep. They buy what the critics tell them to admire.
_Punch_ had a delightful skit on that once. Ruskin had been pitching
into the commonplace artist's style of picture rather freely, so _Punch_
evolved a dejected brother of the brush giving vent to this despairing
wail:

'I takes and paints,
Hears no complaints,
And sells before I'm dry;
Then savage Ruskin
He sticks his tusk in,
And nobody will buy!'"

"I love _Punch_!" cackled Lorraine, drying the brushes on a clean
paint-rag. "Tell me some more artistic titbits."

"Do you know the one about the old lady in the train who overheard the
two artists talking? One said to the other:

"'Anything doing in children nowadays?'

"And his friend answered: 'A feller I know knocked off seven little
girls' heads--nasty raw things they were too!--and a chap came in and
carried them off just as they were--wet on the stretcher--and said he
could do with a few more.'

"The poor old lady, who knew nothing of artists' lingo, imagined that
she had surprised details of a ghastly murder, instead of a satisfactory
sale to an enterprising dealer. But to come back to the Academy,
Lorraine; I know I shan't get in! I've sent five times before, and
always had the same disappointment, if you can call it a disappointment
when you don't expect anything. The last time it happened I was in town,
and I went to the Academy myself to fetch away my pictures. As I walked
down the court-yard and out into Piccadilly with my parcel under my arm,
I felt pretty blue, and I suppose I looked it, for a wretched little
street arab stared at me with mock sympathy, and piped out: 'Have they
rejected you too, poor darling?' He said it so funnily that I couldn't
help laughing in spite of my blues."

"When are you likely to hear y