CHAPTER XII
MRS. GLADWYNE’S APPEAL
Millicent was sitting in a window-seat with a paint-box beside her and a drawing of a water-ouzel upon her knee. It was a lifelike sketch, but she had a great capacity for painstaking and she was not altogether pleased with the drawing. The bird stood on a stone an inch or two above a stream, its white breast harmonizing with the flecks of snowy froth, and the rest of its rather somber plumage of the same hue as a neighboring patch of shadow. This was as it should be, except that, as the central object of a picture, it was too inconspicuous. She was absorbed in contemplating it when Mrs. Gladwyne was shown in. Clarence’s mother did not pay many visits and Millicent fancied she had some particular object in coming.
She sat down where the sunlight fell on her gentle face and silvery hair, her delicate white hands spread out on her dark dress.
“Busy, as usual, my dear,” she said, glancing at the sketch. “That’s very pretty.”
“I think it’s correct,” returned Millicent; “but I’m not sure it’s what it ought to be in other respects. You see, its purpose is to show people what a water-ouzel is like and it’s hard to make the creature out. Of course, I could have drawn it against a background that would have forced up every line, but that wouldn’t have been right—these wild things were made to fade into their surroundings.” She laughed. “Truth is rigid and uncompromising—it’s difficult to make it subservient to expediency.”
Her visitor did not feel inclined to discuss the matter.
“You’re too fastidious,” she smiled, and added with a sigh: “George was like that. Little things keep cropping up every day to show it—I mean in connection with his care of the property. I’m sometimes afraid that Clarence is different.”
Millicent could not deny this, but she did not see his mother’s purpose in confessing it.
“Of course,” she answered, as she rang for tea, “he hasn’t been in charge very long. One can learn only by experience.”