Here he glanced towards the clearing between the willows, where at this moment Tilda reappeared in a hurry, followed—at a sedater pace—by a young woman in a pale blue sunbonnet.
"Oh, Arthur Miles, it's just splendid!" she announced, waving a letter in her hand. And with that, noting the boy's attitude, she checked herself and stared suspiciously from him to the artist. "Wot yer doin' to 'im?" she demanded.
"Painting his portrait."
"Then you didn't ought, an' 'e'd no business to allow it!"
She stepped to the canvas, examined it quickly, anxiously, then with a puzzled frown that seemed to relax in a sigh of relief—
"Well, it don't seem as you've done much 'arm as yet. But all the same, you didn't ought."
"I want to know what's splendid?" the artist inquired, looking from her to the girl in the sun-bonnet, who blushed rosily.
Tilda, for her part, looked at Arthur Miles and to him addressed her answer—
"'Enery's broke it off!"
"Oh!" said the boy. He reflected a moment, and added with a bright smile, "And what about Sam?"