Eleanor laughed; but yet she thought that if the surviving prebendary paid the bill the object of the artist as a professional man would, in great measure, be obtained.
'I don't know about the dean and chapter and the prebendary's widow,' said Eleanor. 'Of course you must take them as they come. But the fact of your having a great cathedral in which such ornaments are required, could not but be in your favour.'
'No real artist could descend to the ornamentation of a cathedral,' said Bertie, who had his ideas of the high ecstatic ambition of art, as indeed all artists have, who are not in receipt of a good income. 'Building should be fitted to grace the sculpture, not the sculpture to grace the building.'
'Yes, when the work of art is good enough to merit it. Do you, Mr
Stanhope, do something sufficiently excellent, and we ladies of
Barchester will erect for it a fitting receptacle. Come, what shall
the subject be?'
'I'll put you in your pony-chair, Mrs Bold, as Dannecker put
Ariadne on her lion. Only you must promise to sit for me.'
'My ponies are too tame, I fear, and my broad-brimmed straw hat will not look so well in marble as the lace veil of the prebendary's wife.'
'If you will not consent to that, Mrs Bold, I will consent to try no other subject in Barchester.'
'You are determined, then, to push your fortune in other lands?'
'I am determined,' said Bertie, slowly and significantly as he tried to bring up his mind to a great resolve; 'I am determined in this matter to be guided wholly by you.'
'Wholly by me!' said Eleanor, astonished at, and not quite liking his altered manner.