Floss claimed a kiss.
'Me dive daddie dat,' she said in her kindest way, 'out mine cubbub.'
And thus was the painting of the ship begun.
'Can you see what I mean, Bart?' Cameron said two months later, when the picture was almost finished, so desperately had he worked at it.
'You mean it for a ship, don't you?' Bart said. 'If I'd been you, though, dad, I'd have painted a steamship with two funnels. People don't think much of sailing-boats now.'
'Can you see what I mean, Hermie?' Cameron said, and wistfulness had crept into his eyes.
Hermie's blue-flower eyes were regarding the great canvas dubiously.
'Couldn't you have made the water blue, papa?' she said; 'the sea is blue, you know. P'raps, though, you hadn't enough blue paint. But I like it to be a sailing-boat; steamships aren't so clean.'
The man's heart clamoured for his wife, who had never been at a loss to find what he meant. For a moment it seemed intolerable to him that she was not there at his elbow, to share the exaltation of the moment with him.
'Run away, run away,' he said irritably to Hermie and Bart; 'you shake my elbow, you worry me; run away.'