“Colonel Raymond is his name,” he said.
“I wonder why he went away?” said Arthur, and a sound like a chuckle came from Mr. Hewson.
CHAPTER VIII
Three days after this the picture exhibition opened, and Jeannie and Miss Fortescue, as they strolled out one morning, passed the Guildhall, where placards were up saying that the seventh exhibition of the Wroxton Art Union was now open inside. Jeannie wished to go in. Miss Fortescue was certain that she did not.
“All you will see, Jeannie,” she said, “will be about an acre of Wroxton Cathedral, six pictures of sunrise on the Alps, and some studies of carnations. You can see Wroxton Cathedral and the carnations in our own garden, and you can see sunrise on the Alps in any tomato salad.”
“I bet you a sterling shilling,” said Jeannie, “that there is at least one picture that interests us; I have never yet been to any exhibition in which there was not something I liked to look at. Do you take it, Aunt Em?”
“Done,” said Aunt Em.
It was still early, and only a few people were straying about the room, looking as people do at an exhibition, as if they were lost and wanted to find their way out. But an acre of Wroxton Cathedral, as Aunt Em had said, stopped egress on one side, the spears of rose-tinted Alps on another, and several forbidding portraits on a third. At the far end of the room, however, were some ten or twelve people congregated round one picture.
“That will be the one, Aunt Em,” said Jeannie, “over which I shall win my bet. So we’ll look at it last.”
Miss Fortescue smiled in a superior manner.