Part 5 (1/2)

”Feel mine,” said Gardiner, crimson with the exertion of lifting his tiny arm to the position of his cousin's.

”Immense, Gardiner!” Fairfax complimented, ”immense.”

”Feel mine,” cried Bella, and the sculptor touched between his fingers the fine little member.

”Great, little cousin!”

”I'll be the gladiator's wife and applaud him from the Coliseum and throw flowers on him.”

Fairfax lingered with them another hour, laughing at his simplicity in finding them such companions. With compunction, he endeavoured to take up his lesson again with Bella, unwilling and recalcitrant. She drew a few half-hearted circles, a page of wobbly lines, and at the suspicion of tears Fairfax desisted, surprised to find how the idea of tears from her touched him. Then in the window between them, he watched as the children told him they always did, for ”mother's car to come home.”

”She is sharping,” exclaimed Gardiner, slowly; ”she has to sharp very hard, my mother does. She comes back in the cars, only she never comes,”

he finished with patient fatality.

”Silly,” exclaimed his sister, ”she always comes at dinner-time. And we bet on the cars, Cousin Antony. Now let's say it will be the seventy-first. We have to put it far away off,” she explained, ”'cause we're beginning early.”

Fairfax left them, touched by their patience in watching for the mother bird. He promised to return soon, soon, to go on with his wonderful tales. As he went downstairs Bella called after him.

”But you didn't say _which_ car you bet on, Cousin Antony.”

And Fairfax called back in his Southern drawl: ”I reckon she'll come in a pumpkin chariot.” And he heard their delighted giggles as he limped downstairs.

CHAPTER IX

He avoided his uncle, Mr. Carew, and made up his mind that if the master of the house were brusque to him, he would not return, were the threshold worn never so dear by little feet. Bella had the loveliest little feet a fellow connoisseur of plastic beauty could wish to see, could wish to watch twinkle in run-down slippers, in scuffled boots--in boots where a b.u.t.ton or two was always lacking--and once when she kicked off her strap slipper at a lesson Fairfax saw, through a hole in the stocking, one small perfect toe--a toe of Greek marble perfection, a most charming, snowy, rosy bit of flesh, and he imagined how adorable the little foot must be.

To an audience, composed of a dreamy boy and an ardent, enthusiastic little girl, Fairfax confessed his talent, spoke of his hopes, of his art, even hinted at genius, and one day fetched his treasures, his bits of moistened clay, to show the children.

”Oh, they are perfectly _beautiful_, Cousin Antony. Wouldn't you do Gardiner's head for mother?”

On this day, with his overcoat and hat, Fairfax had laid by a paper parcel. It was stormy, and around the upper windows the snow blew and the winds cried. Propped up by pillows, Gardiner, in his red flannel dressing-gown, nestled in the corner of the sofa. Antony regarded Bella, red as a cardinal bird in her homely dress; he had seen her wear no other dress and would have regretted the change.

”Oh, I'll do Gardiner one of these days, but I reckon I'll make another study to-day.”

”Me?” Bella shook back her mane.

Her cousin considered her with an impersonal eye, whose expression she did not understand to be the artist's gauge and measure.

”Bella,” he said shortly, ”I'm going to make a cast of your foot.”

She was sitting on the sofa and drew her feet under her.

”Only just my foot, Cousin Antony, not all of me?”

”Come now,” said the sculptor, ”it won't take long. It's heaps of sport.”

He unrolled the paper parcel he had brought, unfolding a ma.s.s of snowy, delectable looking powder.