"Nascitur non fit? I suppose so, but it is curious—in a savage nation;" and he drank the coffee slowly and appreciatively, with the air of a professional wine-taster.
Mona rose, put her cup on the rustic table, and looked at Evelyn's painting. "How are you getting on?" she said, laying her hand caressingly on the girl's shoulder.
"If only the shadows would stand still! Mona, you are very lazy. Do come and draw. See, I've two sketch-blocks, and no end of brushes."
"Ah!" said Mona. "Let me really succeed with a Dies Iræ, or a Transfiguration, and then I shall think of attacking the Nærodal."
Evelyn raised her blue eyes. "Don't be cutting, please," she said quietly.
"And why not, pray, if it amuses me and does you no harm? In the insolent superiority of youth, must you needs dock one of the few privileges of crabbed age? My dear," she went on, seating herself again, "when I had reached the mature age of twelve I planned a great historic painting, The Death of William II. I took a pillow, tied a string some inches from one end, and round the kingly neck, thus roughly indicated, I fastened my own babyish merino cape, which was to do duty for the regal mantle. I threw my model violently on the floor to make the folds of the cape fall haphazard, and then with infinite pains I proceeded to make them a great deal more haphazard than the fall had done. To tell the truth, the size and cut of the garment were such that I might almost as well have tried to get folds in a collar."
"No great feat," said Sir Douglas ruefully, "if it came from a Norwegian laundry! Well?"
Mona laughed sympathetically. "On the same principle I studiously arranged my head and arms on the dressing-table before the glass to look as if I had fallen from my horse, and I studied the attitude till I flattered myself that I could draw it from memory. But the legs and the nether garments—there lay the rub! Heigh-ho, Evelyn! you need not grudge me my cheap cynicism as a solatium for the loss of the excitement that kept me awake making plans for hours at night, and the passionate eagerness with which I prosecuted my researches by day—between the boards of Collier's 'British History'!"
"But the picture," asked Sir Douglas; "does it survive!"
"Alas, no! Not even as an unfinished fragment. A laburnum-tree and two rose-bushes in the garden represented the New Forest, and I never watched any one leave the room without making a mental study of Walter Tyrrell disappearing among the trees. But the royal legs were too great a responsibility."