"What are they all looking at?" he said, drawing near to where a crowd had gathered around one of the lower paintings.
"At some stupid picture or other," I replied, impatiently. "It is always the stupid pictures that the people look at."
He smiled at the petulant speech, and, spite of my evident indifference made way for me through the crowd of gazers; but I turned away, I would not look. With an ill-repressed smile of contempt, I listened to the "exquisite," "beautiful," "a wonderful thing," which I heard around me.
"Yes," I thought, scornfully, "much you know about it, I dare say."
"I really think we must mark this one," whispered my cousin. "What do you say?"
I looked up ungraciously, but the book and pencil-case nearly dropped from my hands as I recognized "The Young Girl Reading."
"Don't you like it?" asked Mr. Thornton, smiling.
Oh! yes, I liked it! and him whose genius had created it, and whose master-hand had fashioned it; ay! and for his sake I liked even those who gazed on it, in a fast increasing crowd; and as if I had never seen it before, I looked with delighted eyes at the work of Cornelius. There was something in the admiration it excited I could not mistake. It was genuine and true. He was at length, after seven years of toil, known and famous. Sudden repute must have something of a breathless joy, but it cannot possess the sweetness of a slow-earned and long-coming fame. I felt as if I could have looked for ever; but the crowd was pressing eagerly behind us: my cousin led me away.
"I see you will not mark it," he gaily said, taking the catalogue from me.
"Do you really like it?" I asked, stammering.