“Sure. They’re just half-way. All they’ve got is the longing, the urge forward.”
“But it’s something to have the aims and the ambitions, don’t you think?”
“Maybe so,” Peg said briskly. “Maybe I can’t see them myself, and it’s just a waste of time keeping me at the Academy. I’m not a genius, and I’ll never paint great pictures, but I am going to be an illustrator, and while I’m learning I can imagine myself all the geniuses that ever lived. We were told, not long ago, to paint a typical city scene. Most of the class went in for the regulation things, Washington Arch and Grant’s Tomb, Madison Square and the opera crowd at the Met. Do you know what I did?” She pushed back her hair from her eager face, and smiled. “I went down on the East Side and you know how they’re always digging up the streets here after the gas mains or something that’s gone wrong? Well, I found some workmen resting, sitting on the edge of the trench eating lunch in the sunlight, and some kids playing in the dirt as if it were sand. Golly, it was wonderful, Jean, the color and composition and I managed to get it all in lovely splashes. I just called it Noon. Does it sound good?”
“Splendid,” said Jean.
Peg nodded happily. “Miss Weston said it was the best thing I had done, the best in the class. You can find beauty anywhere if you look for it.”
“Oh, gee, it’s good to be down talking to you again,” Jean exclaimed. “It spurs me along so to be where others are working and thinking.”
“Think so?” Peg turned her head with her funny quizzical smile. “You ought to hear Pop Higgins talk on that. He runs away to a little shack somewhere up on the Hudson when he wants to paint. He says Emerson and Thoreau were right when they wrote about the still places where you rest and invite your soul. Let’s get dressed. It’s after eleven already and if we want to do any shopping before that concert we ought to be going.”
11. The Sculptured Head
That evening a few of Peg’s artist friends came in to talk shop, and Jean found her old-time favorite teacher, Pop Higgins, among them. He was about seventy, but erect and quick of step as any of the boys, with iron-gray hair, close-cut and curly, and keen brown eyes. He was really splendid looking, Jean thought.