But I wish I were handier at drawing. King Attar in his chair of state is all out of perspective. And the flying dentists look like a lot of daddy-longlegs; while as for their implements, they might be anything you please. However, I can easily remedy that by drawing lines to the margin with an explanation of each particular instrument—‘these are tweezers,’ ‘this is a file’—like Melton Prior does in his war pictures, you know.”
“Capital! You’ve got everything cut and dried, I see. Though, by the way, you needn’t talk bad grammar under the stimulus of composition. Didn’t your governess teach you that ‘like Melton Prior does’ is bad grammar? If not, she isn’t worth her salt.”
“It’s our French, Reggie, that troubles her more than our English. At any rate, when she called us in to dinner yesterday, I said, ‘Je suis déjà,’ meaning, of course, ‘I am all ready,’ and she had just the faintest suspicion in the world that I intended it for a joke, and boxed my ears on the chance.”
“And served you jolly well right for your cheek. But I can’t stop chattering here. Give me half the prize if you get it, for the encouragement I’ve given you.”
As the door closed upon him something suspiciously like the sound of a kiss was heard in the corridor outside, whereupon the door re-opened and a laughing face peeped in at the children.
A dainty little personage she was, to whom her cousin Reggie had long ago given his heart. And a pretty picture she made in the school-room as the sunlight fell on her hair from the window opposite, and warmed its ruddy glow to the famed Venetian tint. Not the very highest type of beauty, perhaps. At any rate the best masters of antiquity would not have sanctioned the tip-tilted nose and over-large mouth. Yet even they could have found no fault with the delicate poise of the head, the shapely neck, above all, with the tawny hazel eyes and slyly drooping lids; and you must have gone direct to the Faun of the Capitol if you had wished to rival the sunny brightness of the face, and the rippling smile that played about her lips. Almost one expected to catch a glimpse of the pointed ears which Donatello was supposed to conceal behind his curls.
“Well, you pickles,” she exclaimed, “and where’s your guardian angel Josephine gone? Not left you to your own devices if she’s a wise woman.”
“Oh! she’s off to the garden, Cousin Marion, ‘to cut a cabbage to make an apple pie,’ as Verdant Green said. I mean she’s gone to dig up all the weeds and dandelions that lie handy. ‘It must be,’ she said, ‘that I have herbs—savage herbs—to aid the digestion.’ Only the other day she half poisoned herself with celandine roots, which she thought looked promising for the composition of a salad.”
“She’s as good as another gardener,” put in Gertie, “and does all the weeding. Besides, she’s so beautifully tidy, and consumes all that she gets, like a well-regulated bonfire. But do stay a minute and help us, Marion. We’re making poetry to win the Attar Competition. Do give us a verse or two; we’ve used up all our ideas.”
“What I, my child? Why, I never made a line of poetry in my life, and hardly ever remembered one. See how the very thought of it has made me fly.” At the door she looked back laughing: