“It is done—as much as anything of that kind ever is done.”
“Shall we go in and look at it?”
Isabel got out of the hammock rather reluctantly, and they tiptoed past the sleeper at the other end of the veranda. In the room which Isabel called her studio she uncovered a canvas on an easel and ran the shades up to get a better light. Antrim made a proper show of examining the picture, and was silent so long that she was moved to say, “Well?” with a sharp little upward inflection.
“It’s no use,” he admitted good-naturedly. “You say I can’t criticise, and when I try, it only makes you angry.”
“It is your duty to try, anyway. Besides, I am in a lovely temper to-day.”
Antrim had his own opinion as to that, but he stood off and tried to imagine himself at the impossible point of view from which the picture was painted. Failing utterly in this, he drew up a chair and sat down to go over it patiently for small errors in detail. Isabel presently grew restive, knowing well from past experience what was coming.
“It doesn’t seem to me that the station at Buck Creek looks just like that,” he said at length. “It’s a longer building than you have made it, and the platform comes out farther this way.”
“Anything else?” asked the artist sweetly.
“Yes; you have put two gondolas and a box car here on the side track. I don’t believe there ever were that many cars set out there at one time.”
“How dreadfully unfortunate!” said Isabel, with well-simulated concern.