They rushed up in a crowd, Monina skipping and dancing, Tachana walking with much dignity with a shawl tied round her waist for a train, while Guru gave himself the airs of the father of a family, warning them to be careful and well behaved.
“Why here is my little day-star!” cried Facunda, snatching up Monina and covering her with kisses. Ramona kicked with all the strength of her little legs, crying:
“No, no, ugly old woman!”
“Bless her, the darling! You, Catana, don’t get into mischief or I will be after you.... Lorenzo, let Monina alone. Naughty boy, what are you doing to the child? Let her be, poor little thing.”
Monina and Tachana trotted all round the rooms. They were already tired with playing in the garden, and their faces were hot and their eyes bright. Monina had dimples that an angel might have coveted at the corners of her mouth when she laughed, and Tachana’s dark curls fell over her forehead so that she had to push them out of her eyes, which she was constantly blinking as though the light hurt them. Monina, on the contrary, kept hers wide open with a keen, restless, investigating glance, the expression of insatiable curiosity and ambition which wanted first to examine and then to have everything that came within her ken.
Facunda told them to be very good and to touch nothing, and she would have been more precise in her injunctions but that she heard the voice of the nurse down-stairs gossiping with Casiana, the wife of one of the game-keepers. It is within the limits of possibility—happily an infinitely remote possibility—that the earth, rebelling against the laws of attraction, might quit its orbit and perish in flames from dashing against some other globe; but under no conceivable theory could it have been possible that Facunda, hearing the voices of two other women, should resist the attraction and not run to hear what they were talking about. Consequently she left the children, creeping silently and cautiously half way down the stairs. Monina and Tachana meanwhile had come to a standstill in front of the table on which lay the geological plates, and drawings finished or in progress. A smile of triumph, such as might light up the countenance of the discoverer of a new world, shone on each little face. What pretty things! What bright colours! They had no idea of what the pictures meant, but they admired them none the less for that; indeed, they were almost like one of their own works of art, when a kind hand supplied them with paper and pencils. Guru, who had a paint box, could certainly have produced works in this style. These were not mere pictures of babies and houses and horses; they were a gorgeous blaze of colour and splendour!
Now it is a well-known fact that when a child sees a thing it admires, be it what it may, it never takes it for granted that it is finished. It always wishes to add some embellishments of its own handiwork. Children have, no doubt, a loftier ideal of art than their elders, and from their point of view every work of art will bear touching up. This was Monina’s opinion, at any rate, who discovering on the table and close at hand an ink-stand, dipped her small finger in and drew a broad black line across the drawing. Enchanted with the marked effect of the experiment she laughed with glee, looking round at her companions who laughed too, and Monina, encouraged by success put her whole little hand into the ink and daubed the paper from end to end. The result was sublime. Over the strata, carefully washed in with various tints, lay heavy black clouds, charged, it would seem, with thunder and rain.
Tachana was much too dainty to put her fingers into the ink; on the other hand, she was great at pencil effects. Happy opportunity! On the table lay a blue chalk pencil and on a portfolio stand, close by, a fine geological atlas—a master-piece of German lithography—was lying open. These delightful gaudy pages wanted improving; who could doubt it; an industrious hand might draw a bold line round the margin of each. What could be better? This was Tachana’s idea and she was a Raphael in strong lines which she executed with unhesitating dash.
Guru knew that their efforts might end in a whipping and he bid the little girls cease their mischief; but at the same time he felt that it was a grand opportunity for him—he, who had a paint box, and really knew how to “do pictures” almost as good as those of Velasquez. Monina’s was horrid daubing! What was the meaning of the black blotches and crosses with which her dirty little fingers had marked the margin of the print? Appearances might be saved if only he were to embellish the picture with a house in one corner of it—a house with two windows like eyes, a chimney at the top, and a dog in front of the door. No sooner thought of than done. He selected a red chalk pencil that there might be no mistaking his work for Monina’s, he took another plate and began his house. In less than five minutes he had added a horse with a man riding on it and smoking a pipe bigger than the house.
Three artists can never work in one studio without occasional outbreaks of temper. Monina wanted to add a touch to Guru’s house, and he shoved her off with his elbow. Monina snatched away the sheet saying: “Mine, mine!”