"My little girl, let this be a lesson to you! Always do that which you feel to be right, even though you should be a loser by it: depend upon it, it is much better to feel generous than mean."
But when was generosity appreciated in this world? The Hanging Committee accepted the two inferior pictures and rejected the Stolen Child. Cornelius was stung to the quick.
"If they had rejected the three pictures," he said, "I really could have borne it; I should have attributed it to want of room, or found some excuse for them. But to go and take the two inferior paintings, and reject the good one; to let it be thought—as it will be thought—by public and critics, that this is all the progress I have made since last year, it really is not fair."
"Not fair!" sarcastically replied Miss O'Reilly; "not fair, Cornelius! It is all of a piece with their behaviour to you from the beginning. I always thought you had an enemy there, Cornelius."
"But the Happy Time was accepted, Kate."
"Of course it was, just as the two little things have been accepted, to delude you and the public also with a show of impartiality of which you at least, Cornelius, are not the dupe, I trust. It is all jealousy, mean jealousy."
"It at least looks like it," replied Cornelius, sighing profoundly.
"Hanging Committee, indeed!" pursued Kate, whom never before had I seen so bitter and so ironical, "they deserve their name! Oh yes, hanging! Are their own pictures well hung? Oh dear no!—not at all—so impartial— very! Suppose they were hung instead of their pictures—in a row—not to hurt them, they are not worth it—but just to let us have a look at them!"
In short, Miss O'Reilly was in a great rage; and if ever this unfortunate and much-abused body got it, it was on this day, for having rejected "The Stolen Child" of Cornelius O'Reilly, Esq.
The two accepted pictures fetched ten pounds a-piece; the Stolen Child was sold to a picture-dealer for forty pounds.