"They're yours, anyway," he interrupted, laughing. "Everything I draw is yours. You don't have to be rich."
"I mean, I'd like to have them if I was somebody else, somebody who wasn't anything to you. They'd look so nice in frames, Jud. Honestly, they would. Dear me, they're much nicer than those horrid things 'Squire Roudebush paid a dollar and a quarter apiece for."
"Nobody would want to buy my things, Justine. They're not worth the paper they cover. Now, who the dickens is there in this county that would give me a dollar for the whole lot? I couldn't give them away—that is, excepting those I've made of you. Everybody wants one of you. I guess I must draw you better than anything else."
"You make me look so much prettier than I really am," she expostulated.
"No, I don't, either," he responded. For a long time she forgot to look at his pencil. Her eyes were bent reflectively upon the brown, smooth face with the studious wrinkle in the forehead, and she was not thinking of the picture. Suddenly she patted his cheek and afterwards toyed in silence with the curls that clustered around his ear.
An elderly lady, a slender young woman in a modish gown of gray, and a tall, boyish chap slowly approached the point from which Proctor's Falls could best be viewed. Their clothes and manner proclaimed them to be city people. The boy, over whose sullen forehead tilted a rakish traveling cap, seemed to be expostulating with the young woman. From his manner it was easy to be seen that he did not regard further progress into the wilds as pleasant, profitable, or necessary. The elder lady, who was fleshy, evidently supported the youth in his impatience, but the gray gown was enthusiastically in the foreground and was determined to push its very charming self into the heart of the sylvan discovery.
When they had come within a hundred feet of the big tree that sheltered the artist and his companion, the little bit of genre in their landscape attracted them. The visitors halted and surveyed the unconscious couple, the young lady showing curiosity, the young man showing disgust, the old lady showing indecision. Their brief discussion resolved itself into a separation of forces. The young lady petulantly forsook her companions and picked her way through the trees toward the Falls.
"Let 'em alone, Sis," objected the youth, as she persisted in going forward; "it's some country jay and his girl and he'll not thank you for——"
"Oh, go back to the train, Randall," interrupted the young maiden. "He won't eat me, you know, and one can't see that pretty little waterfall unless one gets out there where your lovers sit. If you won't go with me, let me go alone in peace. Wait here, mamma, until I come back, and don't let little Randall sulk himself into tears."
"You make me sick," growled the youth wrathfully.