“That’s done!”
I paused in a vigorous mental effort to put aside my knowledge of the relative sizes of objects, and to see that a top stone of my foreground wall covered three fields, the river, and half the river’s bank beyond.
“Done?” I exclaimed. Jack put his brush into his mouth, in defiance of all rules, and deliberately sucked it dry. Then he waved his sketch before my eyes.
“The effect’s rather good,” I confessed, “but oh, Jack, it’s out of all proportion! That gate really looks as big as the whole valley and the hills beyond. The top of the gate-post ought to be up in the sky.”
“It would look beastly ugly if it was,” replied he complacently.
“You’ve got a very good tint for those hills; but the foreground is mere scrambling. Oh, Jack, do finish it a little more! You would draw so nicely if you had any patience.”
“How imperfectly you understand my character,” said Jack, packing up his traps. “I would sit on a monument and smile at grief with any one, this very day, if the monument were in a grove, or even if I had an umbrella to smile under. To sit unsheltered under this roasting sun, and make myself giddy by gauging proportions with a pencil at the end of my nose, or smudging my mistakes with melting india-rubber, is quite another matter. I’m off to Eleanor. I’ve got another sheet of paper, and I think trees are rather in my line.”
“I thought my block looked smaller,” said I, rapidly comparing Jack’s paper and my own, with a feeling for size developed by my labours.
“Has she got a water-pot?” asked Jack.
“She is sure to have,” said I pointedly. “She always takes her own materials with her.”