“'You see I am keeping my promise,' he said, 'not to forget the house which I treated with such neglect in the morning.'
“I was too bewildered with the joy of my surprise to make any reply; and taking my seat, which happened to be next his, I could only sit in silence, and try to comprehend my happiness. It was as if I understood perfectly the answer to some riddle, without knowing what the riddle was. The china on the table, and the people, had always given me the feeling of being fixed to it, like a doll's tea set, where the table and dishes are all in one piece; and it made no difference how learned or profound my father's visitors might be; when they spoke it gave me the unpleasant sensation of taking up your cup and having the saucer come with it.
“Then, too, we were all so near at home, that we never gave each other room; and if we did, it was by going away entirely.
“But here was a person who set every one off at a respectful distance, himself among the rest, and yet preserved their relation to himself and each other by encouraging their peculiarities, outside of that limit, and set us all agoing by placing us at the right point of view, with, in some mysterious way, the common sense of the whole party as spectator; so that we were like figures in a landscape, which, while we were looking at them, I knew, without knowing why, to be ourselves.
“Even grandmother, who always comes dead upon a stranger, and there is no shaking her off, could not get within the charmed circle, but had to keep in her orbit; and really she appeared like quite an entertaining old lady, and all the more so for her peculiar style of conversation, which is apt to be the family consternation at table. Our little group that evening reminded me of a system of stars revolving around each other, with a general motion of the whole in reference to some point without, which I had a sense of, though I did not understand it; but I felt sure that our stranger did; and this, I think, was what attracted me towards him, for I felt the need of something out of the sphere of everlasting praises for wretched little drawings, which I knew were only good so far as their defects showed there was something better. Now, he stood on the outside of all the things that he drew, and I knew he could see them as they were.”
“I am sure I am on the outside of all you are saying,” interrupted Kate. “Which of us was it who hoped to get rid of moralizing by calling upon Nora for a story?”
“Pictures themselves, as Anna said, may perhaps have no moral; at least, they are not so prosy in telling it as I am; but those who have no moral, no idea, are not usually the persons who paint them. But I see I have been going out of my province; for a picture, whatever else it may be, should be intelligible, and the painter's account of himself ought to be no less so. So I will not tell you how I learned from one person, who had a place to stand upon, how nothing can be seen as it is by one who has none. I have at least learned to prefer standing on my feet to having even so excellent a teacher as Mr. Moran for palanquin bearer.”
“No doubt he would be glad if we all would relieve him, in the same way, of a burden which he carries with such resignation,” said Anna. “But he certainly will be much indebted to you for the valuable information you can give him in regard to your fixed point, although I believe the only point he thinks of when here, is that on the clock, which marks the end of his hour.”
“I am not so presumptuous as to think a school girl's ideas could be of any value to an artist like him, though, if we may believe men, they all draw from us their best inspirations. Perhaps, after all, it is the destiny of us girls, in some unconscious way, with the finer instinct which men attribute to us, to spend our lives in winding up Linda's ball of yarn for them to throw out again.”
“Thank Heaven the ball is wound up so far!” said Kate. “Now, Ella, do break off the thread, and give it to the fairies to play with.”