“This was Cobweb’s favourite place, and if I missed her out in the garden, I knew I should find her here, with the sun raining a shower of silver beams through the network of leaves overhead, to dance and flash among the waving tresses of her long golden hair.
“One day I found her leaning on a dead bough which crossed an opening in the wood, where all seemed of a delicate twilight green. She was listening intently to the song of a bird overhead, and as I stopped short, gazing at the picture before me, I said to myself with a sigh—
“‘All that’s bright must fade! My darling, I wish I had your likeness as you stand. Time flies.’ I muttered, ‘and the winter comes at last, with bare trees to the woods—grey hairs and wrinkles to the old.’
“She caught sight of me directly, and the scene was changed, for I was listening the next moment to her merry, happy voice.
“A day or two later I was in the City, where I always went twice a week—for I could not give up business, it was part of my life—when old Smith dropped in, and in the course of conversation he said—
“‘By the way, Burrows, why don’t you have your portrait painted?’
“‘Bah! stuff! What for?’ I said.
“‘Well,’ he said, laughing, ‘I don’t know, only that it would give a poor artist of my acquaintance a job; and, poor fellow, he wants it badly enough.’
“‘Bah! I’m handsome enough without being painted,’ I said gruffly. Then as a thought flashed through my mind—for I saw again the picture in the wood with Cobweb leaning on the branch—‘Stop a minute. Can he paint well?’
“‘Gloriously.’