"I'm sure you were!" said the Reverend Charles, stuffing a pipe as he spoke, and sniggering into the bowl.
Miss Coppinger was justified in believing that Christian had been a success with Father Sweeny.
"I declare I could like that gerr'l, Christian Lowry," he said to Father Greer. "She's a good gerr'l enough. Decent! Civil!" Each adjective of approval was launched on a snort that indicated some co-existing irritation; "but I have me own opinion of young Coppinger!"
"A good one?" simpered Father Greer.
"The reverrse!" said Father Tim, and a least four r's rang and rolled in the word.
The portrait of that civil and decent girl, Christian Talbot Lowry, was finished; it had been conveyed to Mount Music and was there established on an easel in the billiard-room The artist and the model, having raised and lowered blinds and arranged curtains to their liking, or as nearly to that unattainable ideal as circumstances permitted, were now recovering from the criticism of their relations on the completed work.
The artist who works in the bosom of his own family has much to bear, and, so the family consider, much to learn. Neither in endurance, nor in the docile assimilation of instruction, had Mr. Coppinger been conspicuously successful, and his model, on whom had rested the weighty responsibility of keeping the peace, or, at least, of averting open warfare between the painter and the critics, was now, albeit much spent by her efforts, engaged in binding up the wounds inflicted on the former by the latter.
"If you hadn't argued with them, they would have liked it very much; you took them the absolutely wrong way! But they really are deeply impressed by it."
"I don't care what they think; I know jolly well it's the best thing I've ever done!" said Larry, whose temperature was still considerably above normal. "Your mother is the only one of the lot with a soul to be saved. She didn't harangue about what she doesn't understand! She said: 'It makes me think of when she was a little child, and used to say she saw things, and the other children used to tease her so dreadfully'!"