Part 1 (2/2)
He loved children. Loved them best before the rubbing off of what is called their corners: the sweetness of what is actually the innocence we all come into the world with--which it seems the business of the world to destroy.
Masters guessed from the voice that it belonged to a very little girl.
Looking up, saw standing in front of him proof of the correctness of his guess. A blue-eyed--wide-open-eyed-with-astonishment too at seeing him there--little maid. She had turned the parade corner, and in doing so came on him unexpectedly. It was plain that she had pulled up suddenly at seeing him there. Just as suddenly called out in her clear, childish treble:
”Oh! There's someone on your seat, Miss Mivvins!”
The young lady so addressed came into view at that moment, round the bushes planted at the corner--the little one having, as usual, run on ahead.
Miss Mivvins flushed a little. Becomingly, for otherwise the face might have been considered a trifle too pale. The possibility of the child's speech being considered rude induced her to say in an undertone:
”Hush, Gracie, dear!”
The speech reached Masters' ears. He was at once struck with the governess's singularly sweet voice. When he looked at the place whence the voice issued, he thought it the prettiest mouth he had ever set eyes on. The little droop of sadness at its corners mellowed rather than took away from the sweetness of it.
The lips--ripe red in colour, Cupid's bowed in shape--enchanting as they were, did not hold his attention in iron bonds. His glance wandered to her eyes and hair. From that inspection was formed an opinion--one which he never changed.
The features were the most beautiful and womanly ones he had ever seen.
Just as sweet a face as a woman with golden hair--that peculiar tint of gold which the sun ever seems anxious to search amongst--and forget-me-not eyes, can possess at the age of three-and twenty. She was good to look upon.
Observation was a trick of Masters' trade. The practice of it enabled him to paint a picture in a paragraph. What he saw in one glimpse of Miss Mivvins' face was eloquence itself. But of that gentle, outward-going radiance in her eyes the merest layman would have been sentient. It was the kind of which one felt even a blind man must be conscious.
Details appealed to Masters just then. He happened to be engaged at the moment on the description of a heroine. When he saw Miss Mivvins his difficulty about shaping the book-woman vanished. In flesh and blood she stood before him. All he needed was to describe what he saw: she would fit in all respects.
Save her name. He was not particularly struck with that.
CHAPTER II
THE CHILD, THE WISE MAN, AND THE LADY
Proverbially women love men's approbation. Something of the feeling within him must have evidenced itself in Masters' eyes. His attentive scrutiny--despite all there was of respect in it--did not, apparently, please Miss Mivvins. Possibly, she was inclined to consider his admiration rudeness. Anyway she called:
”Come, Gracie!”
Taking the child's little hand in her own neatly gloved one as she spoke, the woman turned, evidently intent on walking back in the direction whence she had come.
That brought Masters to his feet in a moment--cap in hand, and apology in mouth. Full of crudities as was his character, he possessed an instinctive courtesy. In all the arraignments for his breaches of Society's unwritten laws, impoliteness had never figured. He spoke; said:
”Pray do not let me drive you away! Possession may be nine points of the law, but we may consider ourselves beyond the pale of its practice here.
If, as I hear--from lips the truth of which it would be absurd to doubt--that this is considered your seat,” his smile was not an unpleasing one, ”I should never forgive myself if trespa.s.s of mine interfered with the owner's use of it.”
”Is that pen you are using,” inquired Gracie suddenly, a propos of nothing, ”one of those you put the ink in at the wrong end, and trickle it out of the other?”
A softness blended with the smile on Masters' face and merged into that kindly expression of the strong for the weak. It was the successful catching of just such tenderness which made Landseer's name figure so prominently in the world of Art. As the author looked down at the mite from his six-feet alt.i.tude, the look on his face was an irresistible reminder of a St. Bernard's kindness to a toy terrier.
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