[219]
]“Purple is the right colour for Spain; the people there always have purple eyes and hair.”
So Weenie selected the most brilliant among her reds, and made France lurid. Italy, by unanimous consent, was blue, a paler tint than the sea. Germany, Richie contended, must be coloured to resemble German sausage, that being, as he said, the chief export of the place; so great pains were expended with dark crimson and dabs of white.
“Well, at all events, we’ll do Russia pink,” Weenie said, eager to cover all that great expanse with the salmon-coloured stick, which worked more easily than the others.
But Alf would not suffer this either. “No,” he said, “it’s got to be yellow,—think of all the convicts there.” And Weenie had to be content for Norway and Switzerland to be the only countries blushing delicately.
“Why,” said Richie, “there’s a pretty map! She’s forgotten Greece altogether, and she’s got no Black Sea in at all, and all her Germany and Austria are not as big as Belgium!”
Weenie looked vexedly at the place Greece should have occupied.
“I always forget that horrid little place,” she said. “Stick it in for me, Alf; you do it more neatly than I.”
So Alf performed upon the brilliant map. He was rather quick with his fingers, and he introduced the [220] ]country of story and song so skilfully one could not have guessed it had ever been missing. But then Weenie’s handiwork led his fingers into temptation. She always enjoyed drawing Italy because it was like a leg, just as the resemblance to a leg of mutton made South America pleasant and easy to outline. And even to-night, while all the rest of Europe’s lines were scamped, she had taken pains to give a shapely toe and a high heel to the land of sunshine. What wonder if Alf added a high boot with many green buttons and a green toe-cap? What wonder if his pencil ran north and added eyes, and, where necessary, chins to the mouths and noses Weenie intended to indicate Norway’s blue fiords and jagged promontories? Spain with a long-lashed eye placed just at Coimbra, a nostril added to the nose where Lisbon lies, and a black-pointed beard continued below Cape St. Vincent, personified itself; and the “German Sausage Land,” in the twinkling of a crayon, resolved itself into a particularly fat and solid-looking cat. But Weenie at the sight of the ruin actually burst into tears. There was a prize to be given, it seemed, for the best map, and she had felt so admirable a colour-scheme as hers could not fail to win it. All the time she was putting in the Ural Mountains and the Alps, with Dolly’s finicking little pen, she was imagining a scene in school in which the head-teacher stood up and said, “Prize for best workmanship as displayed in map of Europe, Wilhelmina Conway.” [221] ]And now that booted Italy, that feline Fatherland!
Alf looked quite dismayed, for Weenie was not in the least given to tears.
“I never thought you’d mind,” he said; “you never care how many blots you have. I’m awfully sorry, old girl. Here, you pay me out—you scribble all over this blessed Euclid I had to do for old Brownlow,” and he held out the problems he had worked. But the method he proposed appealed to Weenie’s humour, and a little laugh bubbled out amidst the tears.