Silvia hesitated only for a moment.
“No, you darling,” she said. “I don’t want to teach you anything. I just want to do it.”
“Why?” asked he.
She came closer, raising her face towards him, as he leaned over the banisters.
“Your things,” she said. “Your sponge, your coat....”
That pleasure was denied her, for Burrows had already bestowed Peter’s requirements in his bag, and he came downstairs again. Silvia had given his father a sitting for the portrait this morning, and he stood frowning in front of it.
“Trash! Rubbish!” he said at length. “And the worst of it is that he has got into it some infernal resemblance to you. It’s a caricature.”
“Oh, we’re all caricatures to each other,” said she, “with just a few exceptions.”
“What a heathenish doctrine. Why am I a caricature, for instance?”
“You aren’t. You’re one of the exceptions. But tell me what your father has caricatured of me in that?”