Part 28 (1/2)
”I'm just doing a little group of greyhounds. I'm going to exhibit them at the Academy. It's such a bother and such fun, too! I've got over the worst part now. The big mother and two little ones playing at the side of her make twelve legs and three tails--quite a forest of them. I had no end of trouble to get a good composition. But the chief bother was with the models. The dog would never keep still, and I had to keep on moving my wax figure just as it moved. Sometimes it would turn upside down, and then I had to turn my work upside down as well.
Do you know what I should like to do, Morgan?”
”I don't, but I should like to.”
”I wonder if you'd let me make a bust of you! I want to very much.”
”Why?” he asked, without meaning that exactly, but only by way of surprised exclamation.
”Well,” she smiled, ”I just want to. I could have an old bench brought up here and a lot of clay. If you sat to me, say, for a couple of hours every Sunday morning, you'd begin to recognise yourself after a time.”
He was powerless to refuse. With her speaking to him, he became as pa.s.sive as the clay she moulded. He knew her power; perhaps that was why his instinct had led him to elude it.
”That is really good of you, dear Morgan,” she exclaimed, while her eyes sparkled with honest delight.
Time was, perhaps, when seeing her thus he might have taken her hand.
”But don't look as if you already regretted making the promise,” she went on to protest. ”I a.s.sure you it won't hurt a bit; not any more than having your hair cut. By the way, why do you wear your hair so short? Oughtn't a poet to have long, n.o.ble locks? They come out very effectively in clay, those long, n.o.ble locks. I hope I'm not making your bed too hard. Come now, Morgan, are you still so heavy-hearted?
What can I do to make you merry?”
”Take supper with me,” he responded quickly, with an atoning flash of briskness, the while he upbraided himself for oppressing her with his dejection. ”It will be a real Bohemian supper.”
”How nice! I'm dying with hunger.”
”In here, I mean,” he explained. ”I make my own supper.”
”I know. We heard all about the inside of that cupboard.”
”You won't mind sitting on the hard chair?”
”No. What's the menu?”
”Bread and cheese and----”
”Not beer, I hope,” she interrupted hastily.
”And cocoa,” he finished. ”Do you mind keeping house here for two minutes whilst I run down to get the milk. We have a dairy two doors away.”
He returned in a moment and she helped him to set out the table, for which there was no cloth.
”This chair _is_ hard,” she said again later, when she had been seated on it some little time. ”I must send you a soft chair, Morgan. I haven't given you a birthday present this year.”
”Indeed, you must not. Such luxuries are out of place here, and you ought not to try to spoil me.”
”But, dear Morgan, you've a lovely rug, and I'm sure you ought to have a nice chair to keep it company. You've your guests to think of now. I must have something to sit on when I come and so must your papa. I'm willing to admit my suggestion was not quite a disinterested one; in fact, I'm prepared to be perfectly unscrupulous so long as I carry my point.”
”I'd better yield before you get so far as that. Only, of course, the chair shall be used exclusively for my visitors.”
”Oh, you must sit on it sometimes, as well.”
”Well, let us not quarrel about it.”