“Why, a book for you to put your pictures in, to be sure,” answered Squib, taking it for a moment into his own hands and opening it. “See, all these pages are blank—you can put in just what you want; and when you have drawn anything you can colour it if you like with these chalks. See—” and Squib took off the lid and displayed to Seppi the rows of graduated pointed chalks all ready for use, and of all colours that a young artist could want.
Seppi turned from red to pale and from pale to red. It seemed as if he could hardly believe his eyes or his ears; but that he understood the nature of the gift was plain from the emotion which it excited in him.
“For me! for me!” he kept saying almost under his breath. “Oh, I can’t believe it; I can’t understand it; it is too wonderful altogether.”
Squib was greatly delighted at the success of his experiment. He could not get Seppi all at once to begin drawing in his book. It was too beautiful to be done anything with save to be looked at and caressed. But when the first stress of emotion had passed, Squib got the boy to make a picture of Moor and two of the goats upon the brown paper of the wrapper, and to colour them with the chalks, thereby producing a picture which so delighted him that he begged to have it to take home to his mother and Lisa.
Seppi was like a boy in a dream all that day. He sat gazing out at the mountains with his very soul in his eyes, and by-and-by Squib drew from him the fact of his intense longing to put on paper those familiar and well-loved outlines, only his attempts hitherto with his imperfect materials had resulted always in disheartening failure.
Squib, however, explained eagerly that on thick paper, and with chalks to give effects of colour, it would be far easier to draw mountains than in pencil on flimsy bits of shiny writing paper; and when at their dinner hour Squib showed him that bread crumbs would rub out pencil marks from paper without leaving a trace behind, Seppi consented at last, although in visible fear and trembling, to try to put upon paper the outlines of the familiar ridge of snow-capped hills under whose shadow he had been born and brought up.
Breathlessly one boy worked and the other watched. Seppi had the gift of an inborn talent; Squib had had a little technical training, and had always been keenly observant, besides possessing a retentive memory. All his small store of knowledge and recollection was brought out in aid of Seppi’s efforts, and the picture slowly grew and grew to the delight and wonder of both.
When it came to the use of the chalks—putting the snow-white crowns to the mountain tops, the green slopes, the bold dashes of red where here and there the sun struck hot on some ruddy rocks and made them glow like fire—the excitement became intense. Seppi drew his breath hard as he worked, and Squib kept up a running commentary of advice, observation, and enthusiastic praise. Whatever the picture might have appeared to an outsider, to the vivid imaginations of the children it was a marvellous reproduction of the scene. Why, even Seppi’s brown chalet, with its wood-stacks and boundary walls were all there in place, and the green-blue glacier away to the right was seen creeping down the hillside at the corner.
“It is quite splendid,” cried Squib at last, warned by the rosy flush in the sky that he must be going. “O Seppi, you are clever! I wish I could draw like you! But never mind, if you can do it that is just the same. I’ll watch you, and some day you shall do me a picture to take to Aunt Adela—it was she who gave me the sketch-book to draw in—and she’ll see how clever you are, and how nice it is for you to have a book to keep your drawings in.”
If this new amusement made such a mark in Squib’s history just at this time, what must it have done in Seppi’s?