“For, as I shall never leave this miniature about anywhere, you must be a pickpocket if it falls into your hands. To begin with, then; it is not a good miniature at all, and there is no use in your trying to sell it. In fact, it is a very bad miniature, as you will see if you know anything about such things, which you probably don’t. But it is very valuable to me, and so I hope you will return it to me as soon as you find out how bad it is. You probably won’t want to bring it yourself,—I’m sure I should not think you would!—but you can perfectly well send it by express, and you can let them collect charges on delivery, unless you think that, under the circumstances, you ought to prepay them. My address is,
Miss Margaret Burtwell,” etc.
Madge read over her production with an amusement and satisfaction which quite filled, for the moment, the aching 99 void of which she had been so painfully conscious. The letter occupied but one-half the sheet, and, as the young artist’s eye fell upon the blank third page, she was seized with an irresistible impulse to draw a picture on it.
The figure of the pickpocket was by this time so vivid to her mind, that she began making a pen-and-ink sketch of him, as a dark-browed villain in the act of rifling the pocket of a very haughty young woman proceeding along the street with an air of extreme self-consciousness. The drawing was on a very small scale, and when it was finished to her satisfaction there was still half the page unoccupied. Madge hastily wrote under the sketch the words: “The Crime,” and a moment later she was engrossed in the execution of a still more dramatic design, representing the criminal in the hands of two stalwart policemen, being ignominiously dragged through the street toward a sort of mediæval fortress, with walls some twenty feet thick, upon which was inscribed in enormous characters, “JAIL.” Still more action 100 was given the drawing by the introduction of two or three small and gleeful ragamuffins, dancing a derisive war-dance behind the captive, and of two dogs of doubtful lineage, barking like mad on the outskirts of the group. Under this picture was inscribed, “The Consequences of Crime,” and at the bottom of the page appeared the words, “Behold and tremble!”
“What’s Artful Madge up to?” asked Ned, as he closed his Latin Dictionary with a bang.
“Writing a letter,” Madge replied, composedly.
“To the Prize Pig?”
“The what?”
“The Prize Pig! You know Eleanor said she felt like a pig to be going to Paris without you, and as she got the prize––”