"And a little child stood beside you while you worked?" Something in his voice as he spoke made me raise my head. To my intense amazement the listless eyes were alight with a tenderness that seemed to permeate his whole being, and a smile of infinite sweetness was playing about his mouth—the smile of the old saint—the Ribera of the Prado!
"Yes, of course; the one playing with the priest," I answered, quickly. "But—"
"No; that was me, Monsieur. I have often been taken for a priest, especially when I am off duty. It is the smooth face that misled you—" and he passed his hand over his cheeks and chin.
"You the priest!" This came as a distinct surprise. "Ah, yes, I do see the resemblance now. And so your sweetheart is the woman in the white cap." At last I had reached his tender spot.
"No, you are wrong again, Monsieur. The woman in the white cap is my sister. My sweetheart is the little girl—my granddaughter, Susette."
I raised my own white umbrella over my head, picked up my sketch-trap, and took the path back to the river. The rain had ceased, the sun was shining—brilliant, radiant sunshine; all the leaves studded with diamonds; all the grasses strung with opals, every stone beneath my feet a gem.
I didn't know when I left what became of Mademoiselle Ernestine Béraud, with her last lover under the sod, and the new one shut up in the kiosk, and I didn't care. I saw only a little girl—a little girl in a brown-madder dress and yellow-ochre hat; with big, blue eyes, a tiny pug-nose, a wee, kissable mouth, and two long pig-tails down her back. Looking down into her bonny face from its place, high up on the walls of the Prado, was an old cracked saint, his human eyes aglow with a light that came straight from heaven.
"DOC" SHIPMAN'S FEE
It was in the Doctor's own office that he told me this story. He has told me a dozen more, all pulled from the rag-bag of his experience, like strands of worsted from an old-fashioned reticule. Some were bright-colored, some were gray and dull—some black; most of them, in fact, sombre in tone, for the Doctor has spent much of his life climbing up the rickety stairs of gloomy tenements. Now and then there comes out a thread of gold which he weaves into the mesh of his talk—some gleam of pathos or heroism or unselfishness, lightening the whole fabric. This kind of story he loves best to tell.