“Oh, of course! So it is, so it is; astonishing likeness! How stupid I am! To be sure. The very image of it.”
“Come now, I know you don’t think so! You are flattering me!”
“No, indeed. It is wonderful! But—why, bless my soul, what on earth do you want a picture of such a thing as that for?”
“For my great painting,” said Pandora, with a pretty little laugh. “I am preparing a picture, thirty-eight feet by twenty-seven feet, of George Washington cutting down his father’s cherry-tree with his little hatchet.”
“What for?”
“I expect to sell it to the Government, and to have it placed among the other historical pictures in the rotunda of the Capitol.”
“But you are not going to put this leg in the picture?”
“Yes; I represent George as being barefooted, and having one trouser-leg rolled up.”
“But then, I don’t exactly see how—well, but George was a boy, and this is a man’s leg.”
“I know, but I am drawing all the figures on a heroic scale.”