Again a bright red suffused the boy’s face.
“When I got up to the L station and looked in the mirror, I saw for the first time that he’d made me up to look like a girl!” Clearly the horror of that realization had not yet departed from Apollos. “It was a low-down trick, and I beat him up for it.”
With a new respect for the kneeling boy, I watched the blush die away from his countenance; it lingered last of all in his ears. How often I myself had repeated that stupid tattle about Apollos and his ears at the Academy! I dare say I may have turned red myself, when I recognized how small the talk was, and what a small thing had started it. Perhaps Apollos observed this, for he continued, “You know what it is to have a habit of blushing, don’t you? The more you try not to, the more it happens. Well, Phineas noticed it on me, my Canadian ears, you know, that first day we met in your New York studio. So he thought he could put one over on me. And I’ll say he did.”
“So I suppose you two down there at the boarding-house never speak as you pass pie?”
“Sure we do! What’s the use of holding a grudge? We’ve got on fine since we fought.” A big generous smile swept the shadows from his eyes. “And the best of it was, Ellie got her doll, after all. Who from? From Phinny, to be sure. Said he couldn’t feel right about it, any other way, so I let him.” Having been a boy myself, I saw the point; and I marvelled once more at the intricacies of boy nature.
At that moment, I was modelling a hand, one of the important details, as it happened. Apollos had superb hands, strong and sinewy, with those noble bones we sculptors are always looking for. To my surprise, I found that I was actually copying the youth’s hand, every bit of it. And that’s something one can’t often do; one generally has to juggle with Nature, in the interest of Art. It’s part of the game, especially if you are doing angels.
“Say, ’Pollos, what’s the idea, manicuring your nails? Thank Heaven you do, as far as I’m concerned; all I have to do is to copy that left hand of yours.”
Not a trace of embarrassment appeared in the lad’s reply. “I’m very pleased if it’s right, sir. You see, I studied it all out, from the hands on Michael Angelo’s David. I saw that most of you sculptors use that type of hand, nails all trued up, and so on; and I concluded I’d better dress the part, as long as I was on the job.”
So then, the manicuring was but a part of the amazing Apollonian thoroughness!—the same thoroughness that I had remarked in him when he went out one afternoon with an old gun of mine, and brought me back three pairs of wings—a sapsucker’s, a crow’s, and a goose’s. The goose’s wings, in particular, he told me in his serious, smiling way, might perhaps give me some suggestion for the other angel, “the Phineas feller.” He was right, too. In making an angel’s wing, one does not copy a goose’s, but one gets light from on high.