“Dear grandmother,” I said right out from the heart, “you are quite right. It needs the beautiful winter picture to complete the set.”
We went back to the fire then and she sat thinking while I made the tea. At last she spoke.
“Do you chance to know anyone who is particularly well adapted to painting such a portrait, Azalea? For, mind you, it will no longer be the picture of a beautiful woman; it will be what is far harder to paint, the record of a character. For every wrinkle tells its story, if only one is wise enough to read, and though my eyes are old, they still have their revelations to make, my dear. Who looks in them can read the book of experience there.”
“I think I know such an artist, ma’am,” I said. “He has painted many portraits recently and has had much praise for them. His name is Keefe O’Connor.”
“Keefe O’Connor,” she said musingly. “Do you know him personally, Azalea? But I think I have heard you say so.”
“He is the brother of my dear Mary Cecily Rowantree,” I said.
“Oh, yes, the Rowantrees of Rowantree Hall!”
She never forgets that the Rowantrees are of Rowantree Hall. You and I love the ramshackle old place so that we forget what a grand name it has. Grandmother, I suppose, thinks of it as a magnificent ancestral estate. What would she say if she could see that the gallery, instead of being supported by pillars, is held up by barked chestnut logs, and that there never has been a second coat of paint on the place. Ugh, how the wind can blow through those unfinished rooms! I sometimes think it is the most uncomfortable place I ever was in. A little mountain cabin is twenty times as warm and cosy in the winter time.
I would have liked to have told grandmother all this, but I knew it would be fatal; that if I did, she would just set the Rowantrees down as people I ought not to know, so I said nothing. By and by she remarked:
“Have you any idea of the prices of your friend’s portraits?”