“She's very nice,” the mother answered, with vague extenuation in her tone. “I don't know about her looks—she varies so much. Sometimes I think she's pretty—and then again I can't think it. She's got good features, and she holds herself well, and she's very much the lady—rather too much, I think, sometimes—but it all depends upon what you call pretty. She's not tall, you know. She takes after her father's family. The Dabneys are all little people.”
Thorpe seemed not to care about the Dabneys. “And what's Alfred like?” he asked.
“He wants to be an artist!” There was a perceptible note of apprehension in the mother's confession.
“Well—why shouldn't he—if he's got a bent that way?” demanded Thorpe, with reproof in his tone. “Did you want him to be a shop-keeper?”
“I should like to see him a doctor,” she replied with dignity. “It was always my idea for him.”
“Well, it's no good—even as an idea,” he told her. “Doctors are like parsons—they can't keep up with the times. The age is outgrowing them. Only the fakirs in either profession get anything out of it, nowadays. It's all mystery and sleight-of-hand and the confidence trick—medicine is—and if you haven't got just the right twist of the wrist, you're not in it. But an artist stands on his merits. There is his work—done by his own hands. It speaks for itself. There's no deception—it's easy enough to tell whether it's good or bad. If the pictures are good, people buy them. If they're bad, people don't buy them. Of course, it won't matter to Alfred, financially speaking, whether his pictures sell well or not. But probably he'd give it up, if he didn't make a hit of it.
“I don't know that there's any crying need that he should do anything. My own idea for him, perhaps, would be the Army, but I wouldn't dream of forcing it on him against his will. I had a bitter enough dose of that, myself, with father. I'd try to guide a youngster, yes, and perhaps argue with him, if I thought he was making a jack of himself—but I wouldn't dictate. If Alfred thinks he wants to be an artist, in God's name let him go ahead. It can be made a gentlemanly trade—and the main thing is that he should be a gentleman.”
Louisa had listened to this discourse with apathetic patience. “If you don't mind, I don't know that I do,” she said when it was finished. “Perhaps he wouldn't have made a good doctor; he's got a very quick temper. He reminds me of father—oh, ever so much more than you do. He contradicts everything everybody says. He quite knows it all.”
“But he's a good fellow, isn't he?” urged Thorpe. “I mean, he's got his likable points? I'm going to be able to get along with him?”
“I didn't get along with him very well,” the mother admitted, reluctantly, “but I daresay with a man it would be different. You see, his father was ill all those four years, and Alfred hated the shop as bad as you did, and perhaps in my worry I blamed him more than was fair. I want to be fair to him, you know.”