“I was ashamed of everything.”
“Well!”
“Now I am only ashamed of myself, ashamed of the ignoble shame I felt then.”
“But the artist in you? Will you not be coining money by that talent soon?”
“I think not. Those who do the best work are the least appreciated for a while. It has been so in so many lives of real artists. No, indeed, I am not dazzled by the sale of one panel! ‘One swallow doesn’t make a summer.’ And if I can earn money in some other way, I can—I can keep my soul clean. I need never earn ‘pot-boilers’ by a desecration of what little power I possess, but I can always keep that channel to expand in. Does that sound very presumptuous and conceited in me?”
“It sounds as I wish thousands of other workers felt. We should have truer pictures, finer statues, loftier literature, if the greed for money were kept out of the question. You are right. Roland is right. If he is a poet, he will not be debarred his privilege to sing because he ploughs the field or drives the ‘Parcel Express.’ If you are an artist, you will work out your beautiful conception none the less because you have to live in industry, not idleness. My child, I shall always call upon you to help me gratuitously; but you shall help my neighbors at the rate of thirty cents an hour! Do I understand you, think?”
Isabelle gave a quick, warm embrace to the kind creature beside her, and, her task being done, escaped before she betrayed herself into any more sentiment.
It was a very different girl who bounded homewards over the sun-dried grass than she who had moved wearily, almost despondently, along the regular paths a few hours before, and her heart rejoiced at sight of her mother’s face watching for her from the kitchen door.
“Ah! the dear Motherkin! I can hardly wait to tell her. She will be as glad, almost more glad than I!”
But what is that? At first sight of her daughter’s form approaching The Lindens, Mrs. Beckwith had hurried forward, waving a strip of paper above her head. She seemed quite as excited and eager as Isabelle herself; and as soon as they had come within hailing distance, two shouts crossed each other on the sun-lighted air.