‘Everybody has seen him, I should think; he is always about with nothing to do but that everlasting sketching.’
‘He must have been very sorry to be obliged to retire.’
‘Horrid! It was weak, and he might have been in Egypt, well out of the way. No, I didn’t mean that’—as Kalliope looked shocked—‘but he might have been getting distinction and promotion.’
‘He used to be very kind,’ said Kalliope, in a tone of regretful remonstrance. ‘It was he who taught me first to draw.’
‘He! What, Fa—Captain Henderson?’
‘Yes; when I was quite a little girl, and he had only just joined. He found me out before our quarters at Gibraltar trying to draw an old Spaniard selling oranges, and he helped me, and showed me how to hold my pencil. I have got it still—the sketch. Then he used to lend me things to copy, and give me hints till—oh, till my father said I was too old for that sort of thing! Then, you know, my father got his commission, and I went to school at Belfast.’
‘And you have never seen him since?’
‘Scarcely. Sometimes he was on leave in my holidays, and you know we were at the depot afterwards, but I shall always feel that all that I have been able to do since has been owing to him.’
‘And how you will enjoy studying at Florence!’
‘Oh, think what it would be if I could ever do a reredos for a church! I keep on dreaming and fancying them, and now there really seems a hope. Is that Arnscombe Church?’