Part 13 (2/2)

to accyoant fo' everything.”

Mrs. Leighton led the way up-stairs, and the young lady decided upon the large front room and small side room on the third story. She said she could take the small one, and the other was so large that her father could both sleep and work in it. She seemed not ashamed to ask if Mrs.

Leighton's price was inflexible, but gave way laughing when her father refused to have any bargaining, with a haughty self-respect which he softened to deference for Mrs. Leighton. His impulsiveness opened the way for some confidence from her, and before the affair was arranged she was enjoying in her quality of clerical widow the balm of the Virginians'

reverent sympathy. They said they were church people themselves.

”Ah don't know what yo' mothah means by yo' hoase not being in oddah,”

the young lady said to Alma as they went down-stairs together. ”Ah'm a great hoasekeepah mahself, and Ah mean what Ah say.”

They had all turned mechanically into the room where the Leightons were sitting when the Woodburns rang: Mr. Woodburn consented to sit down, and he remained listening to Mrs. Leighton while his daughter bustled up to the sketches pinned round the room and questioned Alma about them.

”Ah suppose you awe going to be a great awtust?” she said, in friendly banter, when Alma owned to having done the things. ”Ah've a great notion to take a few lessons mahself. Who's yo' teachah?”

Alma said she was drawing in Mr. Wetmore's cla.s.s, and Miss Woodburn said: ”Well, it's just beautiful, Miss Leighton; it's grand. Ah suppose it's raght expensive, now? Mah goodness! we have to cyoant the coast so much nowadays; it seems to me we do nothing but cyoant it. Ah'd like to hah something once without askin' the price.”

”Well, if you didn't ask it,” said Alma, ”I don't believe Mr. Wetmore would ever know what the price of his lessons was. He has to think, when you ask him.”

”Why, he most be chomming,” said Miss Woodburn. ”Perhaps Ah maght get the lessons for nothing from him. Well, Ah believe in my soul Ah'll trah. Now ho' did you begin? and ho' do you expect to get anything oat of it?” She turned on Alma eyes br.i.m.m.i.n.g with a shrewd mixture of fun and earnest, and Alma made note of the fact that she had an early nineteenth-century face, round, arch, a little coquettish, but extremely sensible and unspoiled-looking, such as used to be painted a good deal in miniature at that period; a tendency of her brown hair to twine and twist at the temples helped the effect; a high comb would have completed it, Alma felt, if she had her bonnet off. It was almost a Yankee country-girl type; but perhaps it appeared so to Alma because it was, like that, pure Anglo-Saxon. Alma herself, with her dull, dark skin, slender in figure, slow in speech, with aristocratic forms in her long hands, and the oval of her fine face pointed to a long chin, felt herself much more Southern in style than this blooming, bubbling, bustling Virginian.

”I don't know,” she answered, slowly.

”Going to take po'traits,” suggested Miss Woodburn, ”or just paint the ahdeal?” A demure burlesque lurked in her tone.

”I suppose I don't expect to paint at all,” said Alma. ”I'm going to ill.u.s.trate books--if anybody will let me.”

”Ah should think they'd just joamp at you,” said Miss Woodburn. ”Ah'll tell you what let's do, Miss Leighton: you make some pictures, and Ah'll wrahte a book fo' them. Ah've got to do something. Ali maght as well wrahte a book. You know we Southerners have all had to go to woak. But Ah don't mand it. I tell papa I shouldn't ca' fo' the disgrace of bein' poo'

if it wasn't fo' the inconvenience.”

”Yes, it's inconvenient,” said Alma; ”but you forget it when you're at work, don't you think?”

”Mah, yes! Perhaps that's one reason why poo' people have to woak so hawd-to keep their wands off their poverty.”

The girls both t.i.ttered, and turned from talking in a low tone with their backs toward their elders, and faced them.

”Well, Madison,” said Mr. Woodburn, ”it is time we should go. I bid you good-night, madam,” he bowed to Mrs. Leighton. ”Good-night,” he bowed again to Alma.

His daughter took leave of them in formal phrase, but with a jolly cordiality of manner that deformalized it. ”We shall be roand raght soon in the mawning, then,” she threatened at the door.

”We shall be all ready for you,” Alma called after her down the steps.

”Well, Alma?” her mother asked, when the door closed upon them.

”She doesn't know any more about art,” said Alma, ”than--nothing at all.

But she's jolly and good-hearted. She praised everything that was bad in my sketches, and said she was going to take lessons herself. When a person talks about taking lessons, as if they could learn it, you know where they belong artistically.”

Mrs. Leighton shook her head with a sigh. ”I wish I knew where they belonged financially. We shall have to get in two girls at once. I shall have to go out the first thing in the morning, and then our troubles will begin.”

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