“I came—” gasped Lilac at last, “I ran—I thought I must tell you—”
“Well,” said Agnetta, still staring at her in an unmoved manner, “you’d better fetch your breath, and then you’ll be able to tell me. Come and sit down.”
There was a bench under one of the trees near where she had been feeding the ducks. The two girls sat down, and presently Lilac was able to say: “Oh, Agnetta, the artist gentleman wants to put me in a picture!”
“Whatever do you mean, Lilac White?” was Agnetta’s only reply. Her slightly disapproving voice calmed Lilac’s excitement a little.
“This is how it was,” she continued more quietly. “You know he’s lodging at the ‘Three Bells?’ and he comes an’ sits at the bottom of our hill an’ paints all day.”
“Of course I know,” said Agnetta. “It’s a poor sort of an object he’s copyin’, too—Old Joe’s tumble-down cottage. I peeped over his shoulder t’other day—’taint much like.”
“Well, I pass him every day comin’ from school, and he always looks up at me eager without sayin’ nothing. But this morning he says, ‘Little gal,’ says he, ‘I want to put you into my picture.’”
“Lor’!” put in Agnetta, “whatever can he want to paint you for?”
“So I didn’t say nothing,” continued Lilac, “because he looked so hard at me that I was skeert-like. So then he says very impatient, ‘Don’t you understand? I want you to come here in that frock and that bonnet in your hand, and let me paint you, copy you, take your portrait. You run and ask Mother.’”
“I never did!” exclaimed Agnetta, moved at last. “Whatever can he want to do it for? An’ that frock, an’ that silly bonnet an’ all! He must be a crazy gentleman, I should say.” She gave a short laugh, partly of vexation.