"The artist?"
"Yes."
"But why?" he demanded, with a sudden twist of perversity to his big well-shaped mouth. "To me it seems such a waste of time—this sentiment for romantic antiquity. But I am not an unprejudiced judge, I admit. I have spent all the days of my life hating aristocracy."
"Oh, my feeling for him is not caused by his aristocracy," I made haste to explain. "And indeed, the Christies were very commonplace people until he elevated them into the ranks of fame. He was not only an artist of note, but he was a very strong man. It is this part of his history that I revere, and when I was a very young girl I 'adopted' him—from all the rest of my ancestors—to be the one I'd care for and feel a pride in."
He smiled.
"Of course you don't understand," I attempted to explain with a little flurry. "No man would ever think of adopting an ancestor, but—"
He interrupted me, his smile growing gentler.
"I think I understand," he said. "I did the selfsame thing, years ago when I was a boy. But my circumstances were rather different from yours. I selected my grandfather—my mother's father, because he was clean and fine and strong! He was—he was a collier in Wales."
"A collier?" I repeated, wondering for the moment over the unaccustomed word.
"A coal-miner," he explained briefly. "He was honest and kind-hearted—and I took him for my example. He left me no heirlooms that—"