“That’s just what a girl friend of mine in New York wrote and said she was doing,” cried Jean, much interested.
“Then she’s struck the keynote. After your second cousin David came over and stopped my career by marrying me I came back home. We lived out near Weston and I began painting things of everyday life just as I saw them, the things I loved. It was our old apple tree out by the well steeped in full May bloom that brought me my first medal.”
“Oh, after Paris and all the rest!”
“Yes, dear. And the next year they accepted our red barn in a snowstorm. I painted it from the kitchen window. Another was a water color of our Jersey calves standing knee deep in the brook in June, and another was Brenda, the hired girl, feeding turkeys out in the mulberry lane. That is the kind of picture I have succeeded with. I think because, as I say, they are part of the home life and scenes I love best and so I have put a part of myself into them.”
“Durer’s heart’s blood,” Jean said softly. “You’ve helped me so much, Cousin Beth. I was just hungry to go back to the art school right now, and throw up everything here that I ought to do.”
“Keep on sketching every spare moment you can. Learn form and color and composition. Things are only beautiful according to the measure of our own minds. And the first of March I want you to visit me. I’ve got a studio right out in my apple orchard I’ll tuck you away in.”
“I’d love to come if Mother can spare me.” Jean’s eyes sparkled.
“Well, do so, child,” Cousin Roxy’s hands were laid on her shoulders from behind. “I’m going up too along that time, and I’ll take you. It’s a poor family that can’t support one genius.” She laughed in her full hearted, joyous way. “Now, listen, all of you. I’ve come to invite you to have Christmas dinner with us.”
“But, Cousin Roxy,” began Mrs. Robbins, “there are so many of us—”
“Not half enough to fill the big old house. Some day after all the girls and Billie are married and there are plenty of grandchildren, then we can talk about there being too many, though I doubt it. There’s always as much house room as there is heart room, you know, if you only think so. They’re going to have a little service for the children at the Center Church, Wednesday night, and Shad had better drive the girls over. Bring along the little lad too.” She smiled over her shoulder at Joe, seated in his favorite corner on the woodbox reading one of Doris’s books, and he gave a funny little onesided grin back in shy return. “Billie’s going away to school after New Year’s, did I tell you?”