"The sun will not flatter," said his aunt with a smile, "he is too truthful often to please. May I keep your photo?" added Mrs. Burns. "I shall value it dearly, for it will so remind me of you."
"Oh, you're welcome to keep it, or light the fire with it!" cried Eddy, "I never wish to see it again. I wonder whether," he continued, half laughing, "if the sun could draw our characters as he draws our faces in such a dreadfully truthful way, we should recognise ourselves at all."
"I rather doubt that we would," said Mrs. Burns, with her eyes thoughtfully fixed upon the photograph, which, though by no means a pleasing, was a very faithful likeness of her nephew.
"Well, aunt, some time or other you shall play the part of the sun, and make a photograph of my character. I should like to know what I really am like, and I've heard that you're so sharp at finding out all that folk are feeling and thinking, that you'll hit me off to a hair." Eddy's eye twinkled as he spoke, and his manner was so careless and gay that it was clear that he was not much afraid that any very unfavourable opinion could be formed of himself. Indeed, he considered himself, on the whole, a very pleasant, kind, good-hearted sort of a fellow.
"You must give me a little time for reflection and observation, Eddy, before I attempt to take your likeness; and you must not be angry when I have done if my picture does not flatter."
"Oh, I like plain truth," cried Eddy; "I don't think that you'll have much worse to say of me than that I like play better than work, and am always up to a lark."
Nothing more was said on the subject at that time. Eddy went out to some place of amusement, and did not return till the evening. He then looked heated and flushed, and flung himself down on a chair by his aunt with an air of indignant displeasure.
"He's the most ungrateful dog that ever I met with!" muttered Eddy between his teeth.
"Of whom do you speak?" asked his aunt.
"Of Arthur Knox, to be sure; who was my school fellow, and to whom I lent half my pocket money one quarter—which, by the by, he has never returned to me. There's no saying how many scrapes I've helped that Arthur out of, for he was always getting into scrapes. And now—would you believe it—he passed me to-day in the street as if he had quite forgotten me. A dead cut, if ever there was one."